A pregnant woman meets a long-lost acquaintance only to have him mysteriously slip through the streets, never to be seen again; a shop owner buys an expensive mannequin yet grows haunted by its look of painted anguish; and a group of teenage boys grow infatuated with a girl-next-door before reality rudely pierces their bubble.
Had the eminent physicist Ernest Rutherford actually once said that “all science is either physics or stamp collecting”, he might have botany in mind, a discipline the very basis of which is collecting and labelling plants according to strict taxonomies. In her (perhaps aptly entitled) new book, Unmaking Botany, Kathleen C Gutierrez sets about describing not just the history of botany in the Philippines but how the practice of it intersected with the imperial projects of Spain and the United States.
My first brush with a Chinese post office was in August 1994, shortly after I arrived in Wuhan to teach English at a medical university. Back then, mailing letters home to the United States was an arduous ritual that I undertook in a drab communications building. I’d jostle in a scrum, stretch a letter over the counter, and get the attention of an overwhelmed postal clerk, who would return my envelope with a strip of stamps and wadded-up change. I’d then head to a table with wood brushes planted in bowls of gooey paste, delicately apply postage, hand my letter back, and pray.
Despite the title of India and China At Odds in the Asian Century: A Diplomatic and Strategic History, Vappala Balachandran’s new book mostly discusses internal Indian politics. Other than the first two chapters and the book’s conclusion which deal with the diplomatic and strategic history of Sino-Indian relations, the bulk of Balachandran’s observations are devoted to the “competing visions” of India represented by the conservative Hindu nationalist/populist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) political movement that supports current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Indian National Congress (INC) or Congress Party that ruled India for decades after independence.
In 1945 to 1946, postwar India was enthralled by the treason trial of three officers—formerly of the Indian National Army, who fought against the British in the Second World War. The trial sparked outrage across the country, among ordinary people, members of the pro-independence movement and, worryingly for the British Raj, members of the Indian army. The end-result? Claude Auchinleck, commander-in-chief of the Indian army, commuted the INA officers’ sentences. Just over a year later, India and Pakistan were independent countries.
In the transition from spring to summer, tensions at Towa Textile are heating up. Factory workers—demanding higher wages, severance pay and other benefits—prepare for a prolonged struggle against management. With the senior executive director abroad at a textile convention and union leaders at a meeting, company director Gosuke Nishinohata is found dead by the train tracks near Kuki Station.
An Iranian grandee once asked this reviewer if he had enjoyed a dish of braised sheep brains. I replied, quoting Sa’di, “a lenifying lie is better than an irksome truth.” Face saved on all sides. This incident illustrates an important aspect of Iranian and Persianate culture: the use of poetic language to shape and elevate reality. This use of poetry has existed in all cultures, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Pushkin’s compositions for ladies’ album books. Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano argues, in Occasions for Poetry, that this art form is the most important cultural element by which the Ottomans expressed themselves, more important than architecture, or history writing. Mustering an immense corpus of poetry from the turn of the 16th century, Aguirre-Mandujano successfully makes his case, though sometimes with the mass of citations he loses the forest from the trees.
The 20 years or so after World War Two were a time of rapid development in the publishing industry. For instance, the paperback revolution made books more affordable. Book clubs kept up the momentum of reading, discussions, and curation going to sustain, or even expand reading cultures. The easy availability of books by the roadside, for example, turned borrowers of books into buyers.
Japan is a favourite destination for tourists the world over, but one reason it appeals to Hong Kong tourists (for whom it is a particular favourite) is that Kanji allows them to more or less work things out despite not knowing Japanese at all. Zev Handel’s new book Chinese Characters Across Asia tells the story of how the Chinese writing system was adopted—and adapted—in Japan as well as Korea and Vietnam.
From the look of the cover design and the description, readers may think that Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon is yet another example of Japanese healing (or comfort) fiction. Most Japanese healing novels are slim with an inviting cover in soft pastels. The stories center around lost individuals who hope to find happiness in their unfulfilling lives. And they often make use of magical realism. Tsujimura is one of Japan’s most highly-regarded mystery and fantasy writers and her best-known novel in English is the young adult fantasy Lonely Castle in the Mirror. Her entry into healing fiction makes sense, yet the beloved and award winning author’s book is different and more layered than stereotypical healing novels, as well as physically more substantial at almost 300 pages in Yuki Tejima’s English-language translation.
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