Hawaii Books

This book is detailed, but not hard to read. I enjoyed it.

As a "kamaaina"(person born and raised in Hawaii), I have read most of the literature about the State. Author Tom Coffman, has written several books about Hawaii, including his first, "Catch A Wave", which was about the 1970 gubernatorial campaign. He has written what I believe, is the best political history of the State in this current book. The previous "best" was one written in the late 1950's, entitled "Hawaii Pono" by Lawrence Fuchs. Coffman's book, in a highly readable and well-researched, up-dates that history and adds other facts. Coffman seems to have researched oral history accounts and other sources and adds much to knowledge about a state that is like no other...at the island edge of America.

Many people dream of moving to Paradise and living a laid back life. Many people have done it, with varying degrees of success. Most learn the hard way that Hawaii is not the Mainland, and that the culture, the history, and the ethnic considerations require a great deal of sensitivity if one's assimilation is to be positive.

"Island Life 101" is chock full of background information that gives a newcomer a leg up on the process. The author, Jill Engledow, was an award-winning journalist on Maui for many years. Having arrived in Hawaii as a teenager, she saw and experienced every aspect of Island life: the good, the bad and the exotic. This book is a distillation of her many years of exploring the Islands scene, personally and professionally.

It includes a history of the Islands, critical for understanding life there today; a discussion of key current issues; profiles of each island; and many tips and resources that will make life much easier after you arrive. Also included is a list of books for those who want to deepen their knowledge.

Moving to a group of isolated islands in the center of the Pacific Ocean, even in the 21st century, is a decision that requires great thought and planning. "Island Life 101" is not a must-read. It is a must-buy. You'll refer to it gratefully many times as your adventure unfolds.

Our first introduction to the Hawaiian Islands was in the early 1980's; since then we have been conducting research on the islands of Hawai`i and Kauai. Our long association with Hawai`i prompted us to develop a course: The Natural History of Hawai`i; taught by Jamie Deneris, Ph.D., College of Marin, Kentfield, California, and myself, Neil Marshall, Ph.D. College of Notre Dame, Belmont, California. This is a course that includes island biogeography, evolutionary biology, and the geology of oceanic islands. Our text is John Culliney's book, Islands in a Far Sea. This is a wonderfully, scholarly, but eminently readable book. It captures the essence of the geologic and biologic evolution of the Hawaiian Islands, presents the key points of island biogeography, and finally the impact of human activity. A fine book; this needs to be reprinted in a new edition.

Overall I found Islands of the Dawn to be a good introduction to some of the mainstream (and lesser known) Alternative Spiritualities in New Zealand.

There is a great deal of information on Spiritualism, Theosophy and a whole chapter dedicated to The Golden Dawn. If you are interested in any of these three 'paths' - especially with respect to New Zealand - then as far as overviews go, you will not be disappointed. There is plenty more in this book though for people interested in reading about alternative spiritualities in New Zealand. Other groups and paths mentioned include Order of the Table Round, Builders of the Adytum, Anthroposophy, the Culdean Trust, Beeville, the OTO, and various Eastern Spiritualities.

The author has done a great job of presenting background information on various groups and philosophies to give context to the New Zealand branches. This makes the book a good starting point for New Zealander's who want to learn more about alternative religious and esoteric groups without any prior background knowledge.

Those interested in paganism, wicca or satanism are the only paths likely to be disappointed with this book as there is little written on them. Perhaps neo-pagan groups had hardly surfaced at this stage in time, and were harder to find. However, around the time of the authors travels in New Zealand and prior to the published date of the book there was the magazine "Magic Pentacle" being published listing various pagan groups, and at least 2 groups identifying themselves as Satanists were around (Order of the Left Hand Path, and Order of the Sword of Damocles). However some information on these groups may be available in a thesis written by a student at Victoria University who interviewed former members of the OLHP. I don't know if the thesis is publicly available however.

cheap and portable and very full of information---this paperback is the best buy I know of for a quick trip to Hawaii

Greg Austin and Stuart Harris's _Japan and Greater China: Political Economy and Military Power in the Asian Century_ serves a useful purpose in reminding the book reading public that there are many other threats and problems in international affairs outside of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Austin and Harris have a wealth of experience in international affairs as both scholars and practitioners. Austin was an analyst with the Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation, defense and foreign affairs correspondent for _The Sydney Morning Herald_ and Secretary of the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Committee of the Australian Senate. Harris was Deputy Secretary of the Australian Department of Trade and then Secretary of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (subsequently Foreign Affairs and Trade)--a position roughly equal to being the chief of staff to the Foreign Minister. Austin and Harris currently hold positions at The Australian National University in Canberra. Both have written previous books on China and world affairs.

The authors contend that China and Japan are status quo powers unwilling and/or unable to provide much regional leadership in Asia and the Pacific. "Overall, what has been important is that despite ...substantial differences, both governments have sustained a business-like approach to the other. It is likely that this will become more difficult, given the greater concern of public opinion in both countries about the relationship, but both governments will not abandon this approach except under extreme duress. We have noted that whatever the public feelings towards each other, there is no domestic constituency in either country for a belligerent military posture" (p. 336).

As the title of this study indicates, the two authors focus on areas of traditional interest to people interested in international affairs, but there is a bit more to this study. Austin and Harris examine social and economic factors and this is a strength of the book and it is well made. Military actions, after all, are the efforts of a society to project and protect its political values, and it is worthwhile to get an idea of the forces at work in these two societies.

In their first two chapters, the authors examine some unconventional topics for their field. The two explore the place of cultural diplomacy and exchanges in the bilateral relationship of these Asian powers. An important component in perceptions of the other are the historiographical disputes about World War II. An issue that continues to roil the waters between the two nations is the issue of Japan issuing an apology for starting the conflict. That Japan should express its regrets in some way for initiating this war might seem obvious to most citizens of its former foes. It is a testimony to their fairness as scholars that Austin and Harris provide a good and reasonable explanation of why Japanese officials have been less than eager to express regret to the Chinese. While many Japanese nationalists continue to deny that events like the "Rape of Nanking" ever took place, influential officials and bureaucrats believe that Japan has already expressed its remorse officially. Others worry that the type of statement China desires would open up Japan to financial liability. Some see the issue as part of the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to use history as domestic propaganda and are reluctant to give this authoritarian institution tools to maintain its hold on power.

The next two chapters then move into more conventional territory with looks at security and territorial issues. The leadership in both capitals sees the other nation as a security threat, but, according to Austin and Harris, the major characteristic defining this element of their relationship is non-aggression. Each nation is confident that there is no interest in the other of using military force to resolve their differences. Trust, however, is largely absent from their relationship. The foreign policy objective of China over the past half-century has been the unification of the nation. Japan understands this objective, and has been quite consistent in maintaining a one-China policy.

The book then moves into the economic aspects of the Japanese-Chinese relationship with an examination of foreign aid and direct investment. In both cases, the capital travels west across the Sea of Japan. Aid has had little political or economic impact on China, but many Chinese see it as their due or as reparations. Japanese investment in China, on the other hand, has had more influence, at least in certain sectors and regions. Foreign investment from Japan has contributed to the growth of Chinese exports and most Japanese capital has found its way into the Dalian region in the northeast corner of the country. Japanese investment in China is a sign of a healthy relationship.

The transfer of technology and bilateral trade is the subject of the next chapter. The leadership in Beijing sees Japan as both a role model and as a ready source of advanced technology. The authors point out that in many cases China with few trained managers, technicians, and repair facilities has a limited ability to absorb the most modern technologies. When it comes to exports and imports, Austin and Harris argue that the amount of trade is large enough that both nations have elements in their society with an interest in keeping political relations between their governments from deteriorating.

As with most books, there are some blemishes. Like many works in international relations and political science, the text is littered with acronyms. While the authors are quite good about putting the abbreviations in parentheses immediately after the first use of the term it represents, a glossary would have proven quite useful for someone not wanting to hunt through two chapters of text to try and figure out what ODA, FIE, or SEZ represent.

In balance, the strengths of this study vastly outweigh its shortcomings. Austin and Harris have produced a useful, innovative study that many, including policymakers can profit from reading if they wish to understand the recent past in East Asia.

Often books about Japanese culture speak as much about the cultural biases and beliefs out of which they were written than about the Japanese themselves. There aren't many I'd recommend - Ruth Benedict is still useful, as is Suzuki and Oiwa's THE JAPAN WE NEVER KNEW. Few of the books dealing with cultural difference that I looked at prior to coming to live in Japan were as well-written as this one, however -- JAPAN: A VIEW FROM THE BATH --and few chose as interesting a perspective from which to view Japanese culture and customs -- by focussing on bathing in history and in present times. Customs surrounding bathing here are very different from those in the west; public bathing is still popular, and families will often share water within a single household -- sequentially bathing in the same tub, with the senior members going first. It is considered proper even when bathing alone, however, to wash oneself BEFORE getting into the tub, so that one doesn't end up soaking in dirty water; to serve this end, there is a grate in the floor of every bathroom in Japan, so that one can simply stand outside the tub and splash oneself. Most houses also separate the "bathroom" from the "toilet" and Japanese find it strange and not particularly appealing when they discover that toilets and tubs are usually in the same room in the west (at the very least, they find this inconvienient; what if someone has to use the toilet while another person is bathing? -- a problem that seldom comes up here, though smaller, western-style apartments often now have western bathrooms, too -- though they still have the floor-grate). The points of difference between east and west are sufficient and significant enough that the choice of focus makes perfect sense. Clark writes clearly and intelligently and has done his homework. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in Japan, and certainly for anyone coming to live here (where you will no doubt be eventually asked either to bathe communally or share water, if you stick around long enough).

In "The Japanese Conspiracy," Berkeley historian Masayo Duus has rescued the record of a pivotal event in Hawaii's labor history, one whose significance has been misinterpreted.
It usually is presented as a black and white drama -- or perhaps a brown and white one -- but Duus says, "Many writers on Hawaiian history have concluded that the Oahu strike of 1920 was a revolutionary labor struggle that transcended the bounds of race. But this interpretation is simply wishful thinking, based on a current perspective."
Nor is it true that the Big Five simply ordered, "Jump," and everyone else asked, "How high?"
"Many among the haole elite," Duus finds, " . . . still believed strongly in Christian charity and the aloha spirit. They did not want Hawaii to become like California . . . ."
In 1920, Japanese sugar workers on Oahu struck the plantations. This had happened before, without much success, so a new strategy was devised. Only Oahu workers would walk out; they would rely on money and support from Japanese workers on other islands, who would keep working.
During the strike, the house of Juzaburo Sakimaki, a translator and labor contractor at Olaa Plantation on the Big Island, was dynamited. At the time, newspapers did not treat the crime as either important or as directly linked to the strike.
Sometime later, 21 Japanese strike leaders were indicted for conspiracy in the bombing. Fifteen of them came to trial in the Territorial court.
Duus used the trial transcript, Japanese language newspapers and interviews with descendants of the strike leaders to reconstruct the story.
It is a complicate one, and in Duus's telling the well-know struggle between labor and capital in Hawaii becomes a richer and more ironic drama that we have been used to.
The bulk of the book concerns the planning and direction of the strike, and the movements of the 21 leaders, followed by detailed accounts of the testimony. It takes many pages just to introduce the alleged conspirators, and many more to follow them.
But the effort is worth it, as in the final chapter Duus assigns a cascade of results, good and bad, to the episode.
She interprets the indictments as one phase of a plan of the Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association to reopen Hawaii to Chinese labor. The plantations pursued a policy of preventing any non-white ethnic group from dominating the islands.
In order to gain support in Washington to overturn the Chinese Exclusion Act, the HSPA portrayed the strike as a conspiracy of Japan to gain control of the Hawaiian islands.
There seems to be no evidence that the Japanese government had any such intention, but the claim played into the hands of white racists on the West Coast who were trying to get a Japanese Exclusion Act passed.
The strike was lengthy and eventually unsuccessful. Koreans, resentful of the behavior of Japan's colonial occupiers, were happy to cross picket lines. The Japanese were badly split, with Christians tending to back meliorist solutions, as advocated by the prominent Americanizer, the Rev. Takie Okumura; while Buddhists supported the strikers, putting them up in temples when they were evicted from plantation houses.
Though the plantations succeeded in one of their permanent goals -- to avoid having to engage in collective bargaining -- they were defeated by the California racists, who got new laws in 1924 that made cheap labor harder, not easier, to import.
Among the many ironies of this tale is the fact that sugar prices were spiking in 1920. Hawaii cane workers had profit-sharing contracts.
Many, perhaps most, Japanese immigrants to the islands had dreams of acquiring a stake and returning to Japan as comfortable owners of farms. Few managed it, but with their enormous bonuses in 1920, something like 6,000 left the islands.
The Oahu workers, who missed out on this bonanza because of their hardy solidarity, quickly forgot their leaders, who ended up in prison for three years or so.
Duus leaves little doubt that the trial, superficially fair, was deficient in many ways. For one, the translation from Japanese to English was inaccurate.
She also concludes that attitudes, alliances and policies were influenced more by the strike than we have realized before. She links the strike to freedom of education, Japanese militarism, party politics, the ultimately successful labor movement of the late 1940s and the Depression.
"The Japanese Conspiracy" is an impressive example of how a multifaceted historian can find gold where everyone else saw only iron pyrites, and Duus's history will rank as a basic text in the social, economic and political history of modern Hawaii.

I have long used a 1965 reprinting (Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., London) of this little volume -- 110 pages, including a glossary of the romanized texts which accompany the translations of mostly early Japanese poems (about two to a page, for eighty-odd pages). They are overwhelmingly -- to accept the assigned dates -- from the Nara and Heian periods, before the Japan of the samurai and Shoguns, but with a few examples from as late as the seventeenth century. (I don't recall any which are clearly dated more recently, but I may have missed one or two.) I've enjoyed them for years, although mostly by reading them in small quantities.

Originally published in 1919, and reprinted without change at long intervals, "Japanese Poetry: The 'Uta'" is one of the earliest examples of Arthur Waley's translations from the literatures of China and Japan (and, on a much smaller scale, from other languages). His translation of selected *No* plays would appear in 1921, and his version of the staggering novel, "The Tale of Genji," in six volumes, would begin publication in the mid-1920s; sudden demonstrations to the English-reading world that Japan had an astonishing literature. He does not seem to have published later translations of Japanese poetry, although he prepared some for a BBC broadcast in the early 1950s, which were printed posthumously. (See the memorial volume edited by Ivan Morris, "Madly Singing in the Mountains.")

I mention how early the work is in Waley's career in part to make potential readers aware that the scholarship is essentially early twentieth century, and so to be treated with respect, but not complete confidence. (Even the text editions Waley worked from are mostly historical documents in themselves.) Also, however, to emphasize Waley's boldness. He had already annoyed established Sinologists by translating Chinese poems into daringly "modern" English forms, instead of Victorian rhyming stanzas. (As Waley pointed out, the Chinese poems did rhyme, but in tones, which could hardly be imitated anyway.)

Now, a complete amateur in this field as well as in Chinese studies, he was insisting on treating a genre of early Japanese poems (the five-line "uta" of the title) as little works of art, not linguistic and cultural data. Not the "done thing" -- even for some Japanese scholars, who preferred to scold their ancestors for poems showing excessive reverence for Chinese learning, and awarded extra points if they could read a text as "pure" Japanese.

(To judge from accounts by Robert Graves and others, many late- and post-Victorian English academics and other scholars seem to have been vulgar Kantians; saying they were studying something only out of Duty, and never admitting to enjoying it, especially not if it was something as trivial as Literature.)

Waley took the added step -- still not standard, I am sorry to say -- of providing each translation with a parallel romanized (transliterated) Japanese text, in order to call attention to the syllabic structure, and the word-plays and other sounds and devices of the poems. In his words: "The translations in this book are chiefly intended to facilitate the study of the Japanese text; for Japanese poetry can only be rightly enjoyed in the original."

(This practice is found in, for example, some sections of the recent Columbia anthology of "Early Modern Japanese Literature," edited by Haruo Shirane. Understandably, it is most often used with short forms, especially Haiku.)

This was undoubtedly an excellent idea. Although his translations are in many cases quite charming, they soon seem repetitious, for reasons beyond Waley's control. It helps to see how different poets actually expressed much the same thought in different ways -- and in similar ones, but with ingenious variations.

The body of poetry he had to work with came, overwhelmingly, from official anthologies (identified for each poem, with its number in the edition used). These collections were sponsored by Emperors (at least in name), and the contents represented approved examples of court poetry. (Waley does include some possible folk songs.) With the romanizations, the reader can have some inkling of sound patterns, and how they relate to the meaning -- an inkling, because (a) a transliteration is no substitute for the written, let alone the spoken language, and (b) the "classical" Japanese he offers is in any case the merest approximation of the tenth century court language (or the eighth or eleventh century, and so forth).

The poems had identifiable functions in an aristocratic milieu, and those found worthy of such preservation used a small variety of forms, and addressed a larger, but still limited, number of standard themes. They were offered at regularly occurring events (such as spring and autumn festivals), or in response to predictable passages of life. Readers of "Genji," in Waley's translation or the two more recent ones, will remember the poetry contests, often on set subjects; those who have read translations of the diaries of Heian ladies of the court have encountered the seeming obsession with whose poems met with approval, and from whom. For the whole court, this was an important way of demonstrating sophistication, and acquiring prestige; for women, one of the few ways. In some instances, poetry and art contests were ways of redistributing wealth, keeping the participants dependent on the court. (In a similar environment, Louis XIV encouraged conspicuous consumption by the nobility, and left contests of wit to unofficial gatherings. The Japanese approach seems better -- but, in the end, the warriors came down from the provinces to sweep the courtiers aside, just as the Paris mob descended on Versailles, making way for a successful general.)

Waley's choice was further restricted by elimination from consideration of a substantial body of verse composed by courtiers in Chinese. Under the influences of the Confucian classics, Chinese Buddhism, and the T'ang Dynasty, it had the combined functions of a classical language, a sacred tongue, and a power-prestige speech, like Latin and / or Greek and French in eighteenth-century Europe. Thomas Lamarre has recently (2000) argued that the two linguistic options existed in productive contrast (see "Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription"), and that Japanese verse should no longer be regarded as emerging from cultural repression. Another shift in approach after another century of scholarship, and not something Waley set out to explore.

As Lamarre has also emphasized, modern Japanese editions, like Waley's English version, obscure, with their typographic conventions and clear paper (as well as reduction to a theoretical linguistic norm), the calligraphic and decorative details of the original manuscript versions; but that, too is another issue.