Asian Studies Book List · 
Asian Studies titles sorted by release date (or by book title):
Theater and Martial Arts in West Sumatra
Randai and Silek of the Minangkabau
Randai, the popular folk theater tradition of the Minangkabau ethnic group in West Sumatra, has evolved to include influences of martial arts, storytelling, and folk songs. Theater and Martial Arts in West Sumatra describes the origin, development, and cultural background of randai and highlights two recent developments: the emergence of female performers and modern staging techniques.…
The Green Archipelago
Forestry in Preindustrial Japan
This inaugural volume in the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History is the paperback edition of Conrad Totman’s widely acclaimed study of Japan’s environmental policies over the centuries.…
Japanese Empire in the Tropics
Selected Documents and Reports of the Japanese Period in Sarawak, Northwest Borneo, 1941–1945
By Ooi Keat Gin
Although the Japanese interregnum was brief, its dramatic commencement and equally dramatic conclusion represented a watershed in the history of the young state of Sarawak. In recent years, there has been a groundswell of interest in the war years, culminating in an attempt at reassessment of the Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia by Western and Japanese scholars as well as by those from Southeast Asia.…
Myth and History in the Historiography of Early Burma
Paradigms, Primary Sources, and Prejudices
After careful re-reading and analysis of original Old Burmese and other primary sources, the author discovered that four out of the five events considered to be the most important in the history of early Burma, and believed to have been historically accurate, are actually late-nineteenth and twentieth-century inventions of colonial historians caught in their own intellectual and political world.…
Hands Across the Sea?
U.S.-Japan Relations, 1961-1981
In 1961, the U.S. economy and military remained unassailable in the eyes of the world. Within twenty years, America faced defeat in Vietnam and its economy had been shaken. Japan was now considered the great economic superpower, while the U.…
Language, Power, and Ideology in Brunei Darussalam
Contrary to modern theories of developing nations, Brunei Darussalam, which has a very high rate of literacy, is also one of the few countries where the traditional elite retains absolute political power.…
Language Use and Language Change in Brunei Darussalam
Edited by Peter W. Martin, Conrad Ozóg and Gloria Poedjosoedarmo
The oil-rich sultanate of Brunei Darussalam is located on the northern coast of Borneo between the two Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah. Though the country is small in size and in population, the variety of language use there provides a veritable laboratory for linguists in the fields of Austronesian linguistics, bilingual studies, and sociolinguistic studies, particularly those dealing with language shift.…
Eight Prison Camps
A Dutch Family in Japanese Java
Eldest daughter of eight children, the author grew up in Surakarta, Java, in what is now Indonesia. In the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, Dutch nationals were rounded up by Japanese soldiers and put in internment camps.…
Violence and the Dream People
The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960
Violence and the Dream People is an account of a little-known struggle by the Malayan government and the communist guerrillas, during the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency, to win the allegiance of the Orang Asli, the indigenous people of the peninsular Malaya.…
Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641–1795
By Dianne Lewis
In 1500 Malay Malacca was the queen city of the Malay Archipelago, one of the great trade centers of the world. Its rulers, said to be descendents of the ancient line of Srivijaya, dominated the lands east and west of the straits.…
Beyond the Archipelago
Selected Poems
A collections of 70 poems from one of Malaya’s leading poets, that depict longing, loneliness, modernization, and insights in Malaysian culture.
Dictionary of Indonesian Islam
Drawing from an extensive list of writings about Indonesian Islam that have appeared over the past fifteen years, Federspiel defines approximately 1,800 terms, phrases, historical figures, religious books, and place names that relate to Islam and gives their Arabic sources.…
Memoirs of an Indo Woman
Twentieth Century Life in the East Indies and Abroad
Edited by Lizelot Stout van Balgooy
By Marguérite Schenkhuizen
The memoirs of Marguérite Schenkhuizen provide an overview of practically the whole of the twentieth century as experienced by persons of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry who lived in the former Dutch East Indies.…
Text/Politics in Island Southeast Asia
Essays in Interpretation
How does the language of poetry conspire with the language of power? This question is at the heart of this volume which deals with Indonesia and the Philippines in the early modern and post-1945 periods.…
The Tale of Prince Samuttakote
A Buddhist Epic from Thailand
By Thomas Hudak
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Thai poets produced epics depicting elaborate myths and legends which intermingled the human, natural, and supernatural worlds. One of the most famous of these classical compositions is the Samuttakhoot kham chan, presented here in English for the first time as The Tale of Prince Samuttakote.…
The Voice of the Night
Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar
Chairil Anway (1922-1949) was the primary architect of the Indonesian literary revolution in both poetry and prose. In a few intense years he forged almost ingle-handedly a vital, mature literary language in Bahasa Indonesia, a language which formally came to exist in 1928.…
Dumpling Field
Haiku of Issa
Edited by Lucien Stryk and Noboru Fujiwara
Koyashi Issa (1763-1827), long considered amoung Japan’s four greatest haiku poets (along with Basho, Buson, and Shiki) is probably the best loved. This collection of more than 360 haiku, arranged seasonally and many rendered into English for the first time, attempts to reveal the full range of the poet’s extraordinary life as if it were concentrated within a year.…
Not Out of Hate
A Novel of Burma
By Ma Ma Lay
Edited by William Frederick
Not Out of Hate is the first Burmese novel to be translated into English and published outside of Myanmar. It offers unusual insights into the social history of the late colonial period. Set in pre-World War II Burmese society, the story centers on the relationship and marriage of seventeen-year-old Way Way with U Saw Han, a much older Burmese agent for a British trading company.…
From Jail to Jail
By Tan Malaka
From Jail to Jail is the political autobiography of a central though enigmatic figure of the Indonesian Revolution. Variously labeled a communist, Trotskyite, and nationalist, Tan Malaka managed, during the several decades of his political activity, to run afoul of nearly every political group and faction involved in the Indonesian struggle for independence.…
The Indigenization of Pali Meters in Thai Poetry
By Thomas Hudak
During the Ayutthaya period in Thailand (1350-1767), a group of meters based upon specific types and arrangements of syllables became a significant part of the Thai literary corpus. Known as chan in Thai literature, these meters, and the stanzas created from them, were adapted and transformed so that they corresponded in structure to other Thai verse forms.…
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