Wood Carvings of Bali

Fred Eiseman, Jr. and Margaret Eiseman

“An introduction to the ancient Balinese wood-carving tradition, offering a history of the craft from the early Buddhist influences, through the classical period, to the modern period.”

Publisher: Weatherhill
Hardback: 88 pages
Illustrated

Opium: The Poisoned Poppy

Michel Robson

Beware of Barbarians carrying flowers. “This was the East of the ancient navigators, so old, so mysterious, resplendent and somber, living and unchanged, full of danger and promise… I have known its fascination since; I have seen the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown nations.” Deluxe irony—a coffee-table history of the “flower of dreams and nightmares” and the 1830s Opium Wars. “Opium. The foundation of one of the world's most amazing commercial enterprises—the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong.” But the early trade in opium between the British (who manufactured it in India) and the Chinese (who refused to trade tea for the poisoned poppy) was a commercial enterprise “not without savage battles on land and Chinese rivers… Not without heartbreak and sickness and addiction… that secured for the British taipans an everlasting place, for better or worse, in imperial history.” A colorful, zesty tale told by a writer and producer for the BBC. GR

Publisher: Weatherhill
Hardback: 88 pages
Illustrated

Japanese Jive: Wacky and Wonderful Products From Japan

Caroline McKeldin

Japanese pop culture has always borrowed liberally from its American counterpart—and often with hilarious results. The author went on a shopping spree and turned up a whole bunch of stuff no American would want to eat or drink. So we are best to be merry about what they call their stuff. A cigarette called “Hope”? Condoms packaged by blood type? “Cow Brand” beauty soap?
It’s all here, along with many more products whose names and applications should force thinking Americans to ask the hard question: What have we inflicted of ourselves on the international Elsewhere? Japanese Jive will surely cause sleepless nights for anyone trying to answer that one. SH

Publisher: Weatherhill
Paperback: 80 pages
Illustrated

Japanese Street Slang

Peter Constantine

Taken as a companion piece to Japanese Jive, this volume gives the English-speaking person a little too much cultural ammunition on the next trip to Tokyo. Insults, parts of anatomy and hipsterisms are explained in terms of each word’s history, its region of origin, context (how the expression for “coitus interruptus” differs from the command “stop fucking me!”), and sociologically (who actually says this stuff). Each expression is accompanied by a little essay that should shed further light on not just the word but at whose dinner party one should not say it. A fine, sleazy little read. SH

Publisher: Weatherhill
Paperback: 216 pages
Illustrated

The Japanese Tattoo

Donald Richie and Ian Buruma

Two of the leading Western authorities on Japanese culture-Japanese film expert Donald Richie, who wrote the text, and Behind the Mask author Ian Buruma, who took the photographs—have collaborated on this scholarly, almost anthropological look at Japanese tattooing. Richie’s text covers the history of Japanese tattooing, its iconography, social significance (are all tattooed Japanese Yakuza?), the influence of woodblock prints, tattooing techniques, and “a frank discussion of its sociosexual implications.” Buruma was able to shoot his photos only after obtaining the trust of the hermetic world of Japanese tattoo artists. SS

Publisher: Weatherhill
Paperback: 120 pages
Illustrated

Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga (Japanese Comics for “Otaku”)

Frederick L. Schodt

Since the 1984 publication of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, manga has emerged as an odd barometer of Japanese society, an indulgence that gives away the obsessions of a people. This book, the sequel to Manga! Manga!, brings us up to speed on the current state of the Japanese popular mind by re-establishing manga’s greater cultural context, one that seems to get divorced from the work during export. Besides an in-depth introduction to the artists, the essays cover topics as obvious as the increasing role of women manga artists and the growing popularity of manga with female audiences, the heightened sex and violence in manga, the affective quality of the work versus its mimetic characterization of Japanese life, and the idea of the crossover of the artists from primarily pictorial storytellers to literary novelists in their advanced careers.
Some uniquely Japanese issues the book delves into include the emergence of an otaku class, young people “growing up with unprecedented affluence and freedom of choice in a media-glutted society [yet] still being put through a factory-style educational system designed to churn out docile citizens and obedient company employees for a mass-production, heavy-industry-oriented society that had ceased to exist…” The author asks, “with physical and spiritual horizons seemingly so limited, who could blame these children for turning inward to a fantasy alternative.”
Even more curious are the many sub-genres of manga. There’s one, for example, that presents a parallel view of history, a serial called Adolf set in World War II which has three central characters named Adolf—one a Japanese-German, the other a Jewish-German, and Adolf Hitler himself. Another popular sub-genre is manga whose storylines revolve around homoerotic male relationships, but whose target readership consists mainly of straight females. Perhaps the central area that the author is able to clarify in his book is the role of the individual in a society that has yet to firmly redefine itself. CP

Publisher: Weatherhill
Paperback: 296 pages
Illustrated

Paintings by Masami Teraoka

James T. Ulak and Alexandra Munroe

“Brilliantly exploiting the imagery of Pop art in combination with traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Teraoka[‘s]… unabashed use of humor and satire combines with a vibrant personal iconography drawn from Japanese and Western sources—catfish, trickster fox, ghost, snake, ninja, samurai, geisha, Adam, Eve, punk rockers, television and London buses. Teraoka’s recent work moves from the indulgent pleasures of the floating world to a chastened consciousness of death and evil with a majestic virtuosity unique in contemporary art.”

Publisher: Weatherhill
Paperback: 112 pages
Illustrated