"Backman really understands why business evolved the way it did in Asia."--Economist "Backman's brisk analysis . . . should be required reading. The real strength of Asian Eclipse is its accessibility to nonspecialists through its startling insights into the business interests, machinations, and relationships."--Independent (London) "The research and reporting is impressive and up-to-date . . . it's a pleasure to read, rich in anecdotes and never boring or academic."--Far Eastern Economic Review Named one of the finest general nonfiction books of 1999 by the Economist, Asian Eclipse was the first book to comprehensively assess the corporate and business practices in Asia. This revised and updated edition features a new chapter on the Internet and e-commerce in Asia and updates on current markets and events. Michael Backman (Australia) is a leading researcher specializing in Asian corporate practice and a regular contributor to numerous leading newspapers and magazines.

The "Pacific War" narrative of Japan's defeat that was established after 1945 started with the attack on Pearl Harbor, detailed the U.S. island-hopping campaigns across the Western Pacific, and culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's capitulation, and its recasting as the western shore of an American ocean. But in the decades leading up to World War II and over the course of the conflict, Japan's leaders and citizens were as deeply concerned about continental Asia-and the Soviet Union, in particular-as they were about the Pacific theater and the United States. In Imperial Eclipse, Yukiko Koshiro reassesses the role that Eurasia played in Japan's diplomatic and military thinking from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the war. Through unprecedented archival research, Koshiro has located documents and reports expunged from the files of the Japanese Cabinet, ministries of Foreign Affairs and War, and Imperial Headquarters, allowing her to reconstruct Japan's official thinking about its plans for continental Asia. She brings to light new information on the assumptions and resulting plans that Japan's leaders made as military defeat became increasingly certain and the Soviet Union slowly moved to declare war on Japan (which it finally did on August 8, two days after Hiroshima). She also describes Japanese attitudes toward Russia in the prewar years, highlighting the attractions of communism and the treatment of Russians in the Japanese empire; and she traces imperial attitudes toward Korea and China throughout this period. Koshiro's book offers a balanced and comprehensive account of imperial Japan's global ambitions.

"How do we embark on a history of art that proceeds from the assumption of a global majority? Taking as a rhetorical departure the construct of Afro Asia which doubles as both an ontological reference and an epistemological intervention, this book centers the worlds Black and Asian artists initiate through their work. Afro Asia breaks down delineated time into points, trajectories, angles, magnitudes and relative positions so that temporality and chronology figure primarily as questions of geometry: it asks if and how we can we be something other than what biology, politics, culture, and economics tells us we are or must become. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, this book challenges the institutionalization of contemporary art as a global enterprise increasingly governed by the judgments of a self-selecting minority"--

Historical astronomical records can play an important role in modern research, especially in the case of ancient Chinese observational data: sunspot and aurora records are important for the study of solar variability; solar and lunar eclipse records for the study of the Earth's rotation; records of Comet Hally for the study of orbital evolution; "guest star" records for the study of supernova remnants; planetary conjunction records for research in astronomical chronology. In the past, Western scientists have not been able to exploit these valuable data fully because the original records were difficult to gather and interpret, and complete English translations have not been available. East-Asian Archaeoastronomy is the first comprehensive translation into English of such historical records for modern research. The book also features an introduction to East Asian astronomy and offers guidance on how to use the records effectively. It will not only be a valuable research tool for astronomers but should also be of great interest to historians of China and Chinese science.

Companies operating in post-crisis Asia find themselves confronted by obstacles that hinder development and progress. Written by two leading analysts, this book identifies the transformation of the competitive landscape in Asia. By focusing on the main difficulties faced by companies it provides a series of strategies for business success and show how to avoid failure in Asia. This is an essential guide for companies who wish to make it big in Asia.

A uniquely prismatic representation of total solar eclipses, this volume invites us to imagine a liberated mode of discovery, perception, creativity, and knowledge-production across the traditional academic divisions.

Eclipses have long been seen as important celestial phenomena, whether as omens affecting the future of kingdoms, or as useful astronomical events to help in deriving essential parameters for theories of the motion of the moon and sun. This is the first book to collect together all presently known records of timed eclipse observations and predictions from antiquity to the time of the invention of the telescope. In addition to cataloguing and assessing the accuracy of the various records, which come from regions as diverse as Ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Europe, the sources in which they are found are described in detail. Related questions such as what type of clocks were used to time the observations, how the eclipse predictions were made, and how these prediction schemes were derived from the available observations are also considered. The results of this investigation have important consequences for how we understand the relationship between observation and theory in early science and the role of astronomy in early cultures, and will be of interest to historians of science, astronomers, and ancient and medieval historians.

Jayasuriya looks at the changing global and domestic political economies shaping the new regionalism in Asia, and examines the relationship between regional domestic, political and economic structures and forms of regional governance. Well-known contributors in the field focus on the impact of globalization on Asian regionalism, new security challenges, monetary cooperation, sovereignty, democratization, industry policy and China's engagement with southeast Asia. Providing a detailed overview of the conceptual foundations of regional governance, this text is an indispensable resource for all who want to understand the emerging dynamics of regionalism in the Asia Pacific.

At the end of the 15th century, Portugal was given the oversight (Padroado) of all Catholic missions in Asia. The Society of Jesus played a major role in this enterprise of evangelization, which in Jesuit hands led to the transmission of major elements of European mathematical sciences to East Asia. The essays in this volume present important new data and analysis on the extent to and ways in which Jesuit scientific culture and Portuguese policies regarding education, trade and mission shaped the reception of OC Western learningOCO in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam in the early modern period. Sample Chapter(s). Foreword (89 KB). The Jesuit Mathematicians of the Portuguese Assistancy and the Portuguese Historians of Mathematics (1819-1940) (279 KB). Contents: The Jesuit Mathematicians of the Portuguese Assistancy and the Portuguese Historians of Mathematics (1819OCo1940) (L M R Saraiva); The Jesuit College in Macao as a Meeting Point of the European, Chinese and Japanese Mathematical Traditions. Some Remarks on the Present State of Research, Mainly Concerning Sources (16thOCo17th Centuries) (U Baldini); The Transmission of Western Cosmology to 16th Century Japan (R Hiraoka); The Contents and Context of Manuel Dias' Tianwenle (H Leituo); The Textual Tradition of Manuel Dias' Tianwenle (R Magone); Restoring the Unity of the World: Fang Yizhi and Jie Xuan's Responses to Aristotelian Natural Philosophy (J Lim); Traditional Vietnamese Astronomy in Accounts of Jesuit Missionaries (A Volkov); Tom(r) Pereira (1645OCo1708), Clockmaker, Musician and Interpreter at the Kangxi Court: Portuguese Interests and the Transmission of Science (C Jami); The Yuzhi Lixiang Kaocheng Houbian in Korea (Y Shi). Readership: Advanced undergraduate and graduate students and researchers of the history of science, particularly East Asian science and Eastern and Western science relations; researchers on the history of the Society of Jesus."

Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music documents the variety of musics-from traditional Asian through jazz, classical, and pop-that have been created by Asian Americans. This book is not about "Asian American music" but rather about Asian Americans making music. This key distinction allows the author to track a wide range of musical genres. Wong covers an astonishing variety of music, ethnically as well as stylistically: Laotian song, Cambodian music drama, karaoke, Vietnamese pop, Japanese American taiko, Asian American hip hop, and panethnic Asian American improvisational music (encompassing jazz and avant-garde classical styles). In Wong's hands these diverse styles coalesce brilliantly around a coherent and consistent set of questions about what it means for Asian Americans to make music in environments of inter-ethnic contact, about the role of performativity in shaping social identities, and about the ways in which commercially and technologically mediated cultural production and reception transform individual perceptions of time, space, and society. Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music encompasses ethnomusicology, oral history, Asian American studies, and cultural performance studies. It promises to set a new standard for writing in these fields, and will raise new questions for scholars to tackle for many years to come.