Recentring Asia

by Edmond, Jacob; Johnson, Henry; Leckie, Jacqueline

• ISBN13: 9781906876258
• ISBN10: 1906876258
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-30
• Publisher: Global Oriental

Summary

These essays argue that recentring Asia necessitates a revision not only of notions of Asia but also of the centre itself. On the one hand, recentring Asia asserts the centrality of overlooked Asian histories, encounters and identities to world history, culture and geopolitics. On the other hand, recentring provides a way to address and rethink the concept of the centre, a term critical to Asian Studies, area studies and, more broadly, to the study of globalization, postcolonialism, diaspora, modernism and modernity. Drawing on new approaches in these fields, Recentring Asia asks the reader to rethink the centre not as a single site towards which all is oriented, but as a zone of encounter, exchange and contestation.

Author Biography

Jacob Edmond is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Otago. He has recently completed a book manuscript entitled A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry. Cross-cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature (Fordham University Press). Henry Johnson is Professor in the Department of Music, University of Otago. His recent publications include Performing Japan (Global Oriental, 2008; co-edited with Jerry Jaffe) and The Shamisen (Brill, 2010). Jacqueline Leckie is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Otago. Her recent book is an edited collection, Development in an Insecure and Gendered World (Ashgate, 2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Note on Transliteration	p. ix
Contributors	p. xi
List of Figures	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Place and History
'The Dark Passage': History, Piracy and the Melaka Strait	p. 13
In Interesting Times: Northeast Asia's Tipping-Point and its Implications for the Southern Hemisphere	p. 33
Indians in the South Pacific: Recentred Diasporas	p. 54
The Legend of Minamoto no Tametomo: Controversy and Connections Between Ryūkyūan/Okinawan and Japanese Histories	p. 85
Encounter and Displacement
Dislocated Location and Impersonal Autobiography: Yang Lian and the Object of Contemporary Chinese Poetry	p. 113
The City as a Contact Zone: Shanghai as a Crossroad between China and Japan	p. 130
From Diasporic Communities to 'Abandoned People' (Kimin)	p. 149
Hiding behind Ambiguity: Identifying an Ethnicity	p. 169
Supporting Foreigners in Japan: NGOs and Advocacy	p. 194
Representation and Identity
Indecent Intimacies: Chinese Men as Sexual Predators in New Zealand Fiction, 1934 to 2006	p. 217
The Trope of the Ghost and Cultural Hybridity in Kim Sok Pom's Mandogi Yūrei Kitan (The Extraordinary Ghost Story of Mandogi), (1971)	p. 237
Wartime Tanka Poetry: Writing In Extremis	p. 256
Reaching Out with Chimugukuru: Positioning Okinawan Identity at the Fourth Worldwide Uchinānchu Festival and Beyond	p. 285
Musical Moves and Transnational Grooves: Education, Transplantation and Japanese Taiko Drumming at the International Pacific College, New Zealand	p. 310
Index	p. 335
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