This eighth volume of the complete children’s sci-fi series features a history-obsessed admiral and trouble at a dragon’s birthday party. Norby and Yobo’s Great Adventure The illustrious Adm. Boris Yobo wants to travel through time to discover the origins of a treasured family heirloom. And since Norby is the only way to time travel, he and Jeff become Admiral Yobo’s companions on a supposedly innocent weekend trip that turns into a dangerous adventure. Norby and the Oldest Dragon Jeff Wells is feeling decidedly out of sorts, and not even the prospect of the Grand Dragon’s birthday party on the planet Jamyn can cheer him up. In fact, that’s part of the problem. Jeff had wanted to stay at the Space Academy for the weekend. Instead, his sometimes-bossy personal robot, Norby, is making him pack for what he is sure will be an adventure-free trip. Boy, does he turn out to be wrong!

Cultural Writing. Poetry. Fiction. Asian American Studies. This special issue of Bamboo Ridge (No. 82) is guest edited by Nora Okja Keller (Comfort Woman, Fox Girl), Brenda Kwon, Sun Namkung, Gary Pak (The Watcher of Waipuna, The Ricepaper Airplane), and Cathy Song (Picture Bride, The Land of Bliss). Contributors include HONOLULU Magazine editor-at-large David K. Choo, Ploughshares editor Don Lee (Yellow), Chris McKinney (The Tattoo, The Queen of Tears), and former Hawai'i State Representative Jackie Young. From the earliest plantation experiences to modern life and culture in the 50th state, topics explored by the writers chronicle the Korean-American experience through evocative essays, poetry, and prose.

This tenth volume of the complete children’s sci-fi series features a time-travelling space odyssey and a spring break vacation gone terribly wrong. Norby and the Court Jester On spring break from the Space Academy, Jeff Wells and his robot, Norby, head to the planet Izz for a toy and game fair. They look forward to seeing Princess Rinda and her little robot, Pera. But when Norby receives a telepathic message from Pera—part of which is “help!”—Norby and Jeff are sure that trouble awaits. And whatever’s going on, it’s most likely thanks to the evil Ing, the new Court Jester on the planet Izz. Norby and the Terrified Taxi In an adventure that changes the course of Earth’s history, Jeff Wells and his robot, Norby, are catapulted through time and space to find a dangerous and bad-mannered prankster, Garc the Great. In their search for Garc, Jeff, Norby, and their colleagues are trapped by a powerful alien Connector Ring. Now all they have to do is escape, find Garc, save the human race, and return to Earth in the correct time frame!

From the late nineteenth century, Japan sought to incorporate the Korean Peninsula into its expanding empire. Japan took control of Korea in 1910 and ruled it until the end of World War II. During this colonial period, Japan advertised as a national goal the assimilation of Koreans into the Japanese state. It never achieved that goal. Mark Caprio here examines why Japan's assimilation efforts failed. Utilizing government documents, personal travel accounts, diaries, newspapers, and works of fiction, he uncovers plenty of evidence for the potential for assimilation but very few practical initiatives to implement the policy. Japan's early history of colonial rule included tactics used with peoples such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan that tended more toward obliterating those cultures than to incorporating the people as equal Japanese citizens. Following the annexation of Taiwan in 1895, Japanese policymakers turned to European imperialist models, especially those of France and England, in developing strengthening its plan for assimilation policies. But, although Japanese used rhetoric that embraced assimilation, Japanese people themselves, from the top levels of government down, considered Koreans inferior and gave them few political rights. Segregation was built into everyday life. Japanese maintained separate communities in Korea, children were schooled in two separate and unequal systems, there was relatively limited intermarriage, and prejudice was ingrained. Under these circumstances, many Koreans resisted assimilation. By not actively promoting Korean-Japanese integration on the ground, Japan's rhetoric of assimilation remained just that.

Analysing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology of "good wives, wise mothers" in support of male empire-building. Although many feminist critics have articulated women’s active roles as dutiful collaborators for the Japanese empire, male-dominated narratives of empire-building have been largely supported and rectified. In contrast, the roles of marginalized women, such as sex workers, women entertainers, hostesses, and hibakusha have rarely been analyzed. This book addresses this intellectual lacuna by closely examining memories, (semi-)autobiographical stories, and newspaper articles, grounded or inspired by lived experiences not only in Japan, but also in Shanghai, Manchukuo, colonial Korea, and the Pacific. Chapters further explore the voices of diasporic Korean women (Zainichi Korean woman born in Japan, as well as Korean American woman born in Korea) whose lives were impacted, intervening ethnocentric narratives that were at the heart of the Japanese empire. An appendix presents the first English translation of a memorable statement on comfort women by former Japanese propaganda actress, Ri Kōran / Yamaguchi Yoshiko. Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and film studies, as well as gender, sexuality and postcolonial studies.

In 1970, Second Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Hobbes, fresh out of college and ROTC, finds himself sent to South Korea instead of the expected Vietnam. His arrival at Kimpo Air Base turns his destiny from a war zone to another face of warfare, the destructive interactions between soldiers and camp followers, aka men and women, that are a part of conquest and occupation throughout history and around the world. Utterly unprepared, he follows trails and carves his own, his soul and sense of humanity falling to levels of hell that even Dante would find daunting. A beautiful young Korean working girl, known only as Miss Kim, becomes Hobbes’s partner and his guide into deception and danger. Pushing through his 13-month tour, he becomes a part of the thoughtless, predatory subculture that binds him to the love of his life, but at an impossible price.

Packed with exclusive stats, tables and fascinating facts, this is the record of the season's key moments and has all the best previews of the season to come.