Samurai - A Concise History by Michael Wert

$26.32 AUD

Category: Asian

The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late seventeenth century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy, from the Tale of the Heike to the kabuki retellings of the 47 Ronin. This legacy remains with us today in the legendary Akira Kurosawa films, the shoguns of HBO's Westworld, and countless renditions of samurai history in anime, manga, and video games. Acknowledging these common depictions, this book gives readers access to the real samurai as they lived, fought, and served.Much as they capture the modern imagination, the samurai commanded influence over the politics, arts, philosophy and religion of their own time, and ultimately controlled Japan from the fourteenth century until their demise in the mid-nineteenth century. On and off the battlefield, whether charging an enemy on horseback or currying favor at the imperial court, their story is one of adventures and intrigues, heroics and misdeeds, unlikely victories and devastating defeats. This book traces the samurai throughout this history, exploring their roles in watershed events such as Japan's invasions of Korea at the close of the sixteenth century and the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Coming alive in these accounts are the samurai, both famed and ordinary, who shaped Japanese history. ...Show more

Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 to the Present by Christopher Harding

$24.99 AUD

Category: Asian

Japan Story is a fascinating, surprising account of Japan's culture, from the 'opening up' of the country in the mid 19th century to the present, through the eyes of people who always had their doubts about modernity - who greeted it not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's familiar mode rnizers and nationalists, but with resistance, conflict, distress. We encounter writers of dramas, ghost stories and crime novels where modernity itself is the tragedy, the ghoul and the bad guy; surrealist and avant-garde artists sketching their escape; rebel kamikaze pilots and the put-upon urban poor; hypnotists and gangsters; men in desperate search of the eternal feminine and feminists in search of something more than state-sanctioned subservience; Buddhists without morals; Marxist terror groups; couches full to bursting with the psychological fall-out of breakneck modernization. These people all sprang from the soil of modern Japan, but their personalities and projects failed to fit. They were 'dark blossoms'- both East-West hybrids and home-grown varieties that wreathed, probed and sometimes penetrated the new masonry and mortar of mainstream Japan. ...Show more

Near and the Far Vol. II: The More Stories from the Asia-Pacific Region by Ian See

$29.99 AUD

Category: Asian

In the outer suburbs of Perth, Australia, a seven-year-old discovers ballroom dancing. In Jakarta, Indonesia, a poet tries to move on with his life after splitting up with his boyfriend. In the Philippines' Quezon City, a nurse reflects on her late mother while caring for a dying woman. And in the Uva p rovince of Sri Lanka, a thirty-panel mural tells the story of a boy who refuses to speak a word. This vibrant collection features writers who have forged connections across cultures and generations, with contributors from Australia, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Vietnam, and China, among others. Through sharing perspectives and ideas in the Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange program, they have created exciting new work that reveals the value of genuine dialogue and mutual respect. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the Asia-Pacific's finest writers - including Christos Tsiolkas, Alice Pung, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Han Yujoo, Ellen van Neerven, and Ali Cobby Eckermann - The Near and The Far, Volume II invites readers on a unique and unforgettable journey. ...Show more

India in the Persianate Age, 1000-1765 by Richard M. Eaton

$69.99 AUD

Category: Asian

A sweeping, magisterial new history of India from the middle ages to the arrival of the British The Indian subcontinent might seem a self-contained world. Protected by vast mountains and seas, it has created its own religions, philosophies and social systems. And yet this ancient land experienced prolo nged and intense interaction with the peoples and cultures of East and Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and, especially, Central Asia and the Iranian plateau between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries. Richard M. Eaton's wonderful new book tells this extraordinary story with relish and originality. His major theme is the rise of 'Persianate' culture - a many-faceted transregional world informed by a canon of texts that circulated through ever-widening networks across much of Asia. Introduced to India in the eleventh century by dynasties based in eastern Afghanistan, this culture would become thoroughly indigenized by the time of the great Mughals in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This long-term process of cultural interaction and assimilation is reflected in India's language, literature, cuisine, attire, religion, styles of rulership and warfare, science, art, music, architecture, and more. The book brilliantly elaborates the complex encounter between India's Sanskrit culture - which continued to flourish and grow throughout this period - and Persian culture, which helped shape the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and a host of regional states, and made India what it is today. ...Show more

India - A Short History by Andrew Robinson

$19.99 AUD

Category: Asian

India's unfolding story, from the ancient Hindu dynasties to the coming of Islam, from the Mughal Empire to the present day   India has always been a land of great contradictions. To Alexander the Great, the country was a place of clever naked philosophers and massive armies mounted on elephants - which eventually forced his army to retreat. To ancient Rome, it was a source of luxuries, mainly spices and textiles, paid for in gold--hence the enormous numbers of Roman gold coins excavated in India. At the height of the Mughal empire in 1700, India boasted 24 percent of the world economy--a share virtually equal to Europe's 25 percent. But then its economy declined. Colonial India was known for its extremes of wealth and poverty, epitomized by the Taj Mahal and famines, maharajas and untouchables, and also for its spirituality: many-armed Hindu gods and Buddhist philosophy, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. India: A Short History places as much emphasis on individuals, ideas and cultures as on the rise and fall of kingdoms, political parties and economies. Anyone curious about a great civilization, and its future, will find this an ideal introduction, at times controversial, written by an author who has been strongly engaged with India for more than three decades. ...Show more

China: A History by John Keay

$24.99 AUD

Category: Asian

An accessible, authoritative single-volume narrative history of China, from the earliest times to the present day, designed both to engage the general reader and to challenge the horizons of the China specialist. Most histories of China appear to have been written by sinologists for sinologists. As Chi na rejoins and perhaps comes to dominate our world order, the need for an authoritative yet engaging history is universally acknowledged. Modelled on the author's own 'India: A History', 'China: A History' is informed by a wide knowledge of the Asian context, an approach devoid of Euro-centric bias, and acclaimed narrative skills. Broadly chronological, the book presents a history of all the Chinas -- including those regions (Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria) that account for two thirds of the People's Republic of China land mass but which barely feature in its conventional history (which tends to concentrate on the succession of mainly north China imperial dynasties). The book also examines the many non-Chinese elements in China's history -- the impact of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity; the effects of trade; the nature of 'barbarian' invasion; the relevance of many imperial dynasties being of non-Chinese origin. Major archaeological discoveries in the last two decades afford a chance to flesh out and correct much of the written record. 'China: A History' will tell the epic story from the time of the Three Dynasties (2000-220 BC) to Chairman Mao and the current economic transformation of the country. ...Show more

China - In Life's Foreground by Audrey G. Donnithorne

$49.95 AUD

Category: Asian

Audrey Donnithorne was born in Sichuan province, China, of British missionary parents. She is an economist and writer who has held academic posts at University College London and at the Australian National University, working mainly on the economy of China. In her long life she has been a sharp-eyed obs erver of a changing Asian and Western world: of China in the era of the war lords, the Guomindang and the war against Japan; of Mao and the post-Maoist resurgence; of Britain at War and in the last days of Empire; of Singapore and Malaya soon after the War and Indonesia in the early days of independence; and of decolonisation. She observed the Cold War from several angles and has also been an active Catholic laywoman in the Culture Wars of the 20th century in Britain and Australia, and in helping the beleaguered Catholics in China. This is her memoir. ...Show more

History of Ancient Asia by Meredith Macardle

$27.99 AUD

Category: Asian

Ninja by Stephen Turnbull

$24.99 AUD

Category: Asian

Ninjas--Japan's famous black-clad spies, saboteurs, and undercover fighters, equipped with superb martial arts skills and an uncanny aptitude for sneakiness--are the stuff of myth and legend. In the present day, movies, comic books, theme parks, and computer games have all been dedicated to the ninja. F olklore and entertaining tales concerning ninjas remain immensely popular as the Ninja has captured a central place in the cultural imagination, both in Japan and in the West. Ninja takes the reader to Japan in 1789, conveying the excitement, danger, and subterfuge of the period. Based on original ninjutsu training manuals, it teaches precisely what is required to become a ninja. Illustrated throughout with contemporary artifacts, documents, and prints taken from the original manuals, as well as modern reconstructions, this lighthearted but informative guide covers every aspect of what it was really like to be a ninja in Japan. ...Show more

The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present by Jonathan Fenby

$35.00 AUD

Category: Asian

In 1850, China was the "sick man of Asia." Now it is set to become the most powerful nation on earth. The Penguin History of Modern China shows how turbulent that journey has been. For 150 years China has endured as victim of oppression, war, and famine. This makes its current position as arguably the m ost important global superpower all the more extraordinary.  ...Show more

The British in India - Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience by David Gilmour

$69.99 AUD

Category: Asian

The British in this book lived in India from shortly after the reign of Elizabeth I until well into the reign of Elizabeth II. Who were they? What drove these men and women to risk their lives on long voyages down the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean or later via the Suez Canal? And when they got to India, what did they do and how did they live? This book explores the lives of the many different sorts of Briton who went to India: viceroys and offcials, soldiers and missionaries, planters and foresters, merchants, engineers, teachers and doctors. It evokes the three and a half centuries of their ambitions and experiences, together with the lives of their families, recording the diversity of their work and their leisure, and the complexity of their relationships with the peoples of India. It also describes the lives of many who did not fit in with the usual image of the Raj: the tramps and rascals, the men who 'went native', the women who scorned the role of the traditional memsahib. David Gilmour has spent decades researching in archives, studying the papers of many people who have never been written about before, to create a magnificent tapestry of British life in India. It is exceptional work of scholarly recovery portrays individuals with understanding and humour, and makes an original and engaging contribution to a long and important period of British and Indian history. ...Show more

Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 to the Present by Christopher Harding

$59.99 AUD

Category: Asian

Japan Storyis a fascinating, surprising account of Japan's culture, from the 'opening up' of the country in the mid 19th century to the present, through the eyes of people who always had their doubts about modernity - who greeted it not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's familiar moder nizers and nationalists, but with resistance, conflict, distress. We encounter writers of dramas, ghost stories and crime novels where modernity itself is the tragedy, the ghoul and the bad guy; surrealist and avant-garde artists sketching their escape; rebel kamikaze pilots and the put-upon urban poor; hypnotists and gangsters; men in desperate search of the eternal feminine and feminists in search of something more than state-sanctioned subservience; Buddhists without morals; Marxist terror groups; couches full to bursting with the psychological fall-out of breakneck modernization. These people all sprang from the soil of modern Japan, but their personalities and projects failed to fit. They were 'dark blossoms'- both East-West hybrids and home-grown varieties that wreathed, probed and sometimes penetrated the new masonry and mortar of mainstream Japan. ...Show more