CONTENTS: Virginia Review of Asian Studies 2008


WORLD WAR II AND JAPAN


“Preparing the Flight of the Pheonix: Nippon Stories:” The Very First Days of the Occupation of Japan

Wilton S. Dillon

Konoe and Hull:  The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere:  An Act of Benevolence or Imperialism?

Kazuo Yagami


CHINESE CULTURE, HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS


Li Zhishan’s Feminist Activism in Tianjin in the 1920s

Yuxin Ma 

Social Motivations for the Revival of Address Terms in China

Xuexin Liu

Transgression-Obsessed:  A Cross-Cultural Reading of Judou and Curse of the Golden Flower

Li Zeng

China’s Social Policy: Meeting the Needs of China’s Orphaned and Disabled Children

James W. Yoxall 


CHINA AND CENTRAL ASIA


Looking Westward:  China’s Changing Relations with Central Asia

Jonathan Z. Ludwig

Educating Xinjiang’s Uyghurs: Achieving Success or Creating Unrest?

Timothy A. Grose 


INDIA:  CULTURE AND CURRENT AFFAIRS


What’s A Kiss: The Unchaste Chastity of Bollywood

Devon Burke

India Looks Seaward:  The case of the Proliferation Security Initiative

James R. Holmes

Time Traveling in India: How Much and How Little has Changed in Only a Generation

Jane Pietrowski


JAPAN: HISTORY AND CULTURE


Tokyo’s Dr. Phil

Benjamin Dorman

“In the Way of the Samurai:” Difference and Connection in Samurai Champloo

Amy Fitzgerald


FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

Daniel A. Métraux

A Conversation with Japan’s Senior Vice-Minister of Finance Provides a Bleak Picture of His Nation’s Future

The Ghosts of Chinese Camp California

Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination and Pakistan’s Ultimate Failure as a Nation

How Recent Turkish Invasions of northern Iraq could ruin the Amrican War effort

Who Plays Better Baseball:  The United States or Japan?


BOOK REVIEWS


John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed. Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Mulsims REALLY THINK. 

Mansoor Moaddel, Ed., Values and Perceptions of the Islamic and Middle Eastern Publics

Reviewed by Gordon Bowen


Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, Will the Boat Sink the Water: The Life of China’s Peasants

Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux


Gi Wook Shin and Kyung Moon Hwang, Eds. Contentious Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea’s Past and Present. 

Reviewed by Eric Strange


Charles K. Armstrong, The Koreas

Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux


Hideaki Matsuoka, Japanese Prayer Below the Equator: How Brazilians Believe in the Church of World Messianity

Reviewed By Daniel A. Métraux


Amy Docksert Marcus, Jerusalem 1913.  

Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux.


Kozaburo Nagatsu, Hisao Suzuki, and Toshio Yamamoto, Eds, Against Nuclear Weapons: A Collection of Poems by 181 Poets.   

Reviewed by Daniel A. Métraux


CONTRIBUTORS