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CA:
I think there's plenty out there, for example ACUPUNCTURE IN ROUTINE VETERINARY PRACTICE (Part 1 Philip A.M. Rogers MRCVS) and others from google search. Looks from your 9 October log entry like you're finding plenty too.
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JB:
http://www.jef.or.jp/en/jti/200309.html (looks like it might be quite a useful source)'cultural trends' and 'cultural influences' are pretty vague phrases. Just what is a 'cultural trend'? I'd say that exploring 'japanese management techniques' via google might be a good place to start --'jmt' is a bit more concrete. Similarly google japanese "corporate culture"
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SBC:
'shaolin' is probably the key word: shaolins.com is a good start. The problem is to get beyond the obvious, which takes up so much Web and cinema space, and to some real explanations of what it's all about.
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PC:
YOU get to define it, in the context of interesting things you encounter as you search through the various resources. The things you've noted in the 8 Oct log update look like they may be helpful; also try some of the results from my google search for "regional cuisines" chinese.
If I was doing it, I think I'd read a bunch of cookbooks, looking for information on the essentials [the methods: fry, steam, etc.], the utensils [for cooking, for preparing], the ingredients... Some obvious ones from the library:
AUTHOR Young, Grace, 1956-
TITLE The wisdom of the Chinese kitchen : classic family recipes for
celebration and healing / Grace Young.
IMPRINT New York : Simon & Schuster, 1999.
CALL NO. TX724.5.C5 Y598 1999.
AUTHOR Lo, Eileen Yin-Fei.
TITLE The Chinese kitchen : recipes, techniques, ingredients, history,
and memories from America's leading authority on Chinese
cooking / Eileen Yin-Fei Lo ; calligraphy by San Yan Wong ;
photographs by Alexandra Grablewski.
IMPRINT New York : William Morrow, c1999.
CALL NO. TX724.5.C5 L59442 1999.
AUTHOR Claiborne, Craig.
TITLE The Chinese cookbook [by] Craig Claiborne & Virginia Lee. Photos.
by Bill Aller. Drawings by Barbra and Roderick Wells.
IMPRINT Philadelphia, Lippincott [1972]
CALL NO. TX724.5.C5 C6.
TITLE An Encyclopedia of Chinese food and cooking [by] Wonona W.
Chang [and others] Edited by Lillian G. Kutscher. Charlotte
Adams, consulting editor.
IMPRINT New York, Crown Publishers [1970]
CALL NO. TX724.5.C5 E63 1970.
AUTHOR Chen, Joyce.
TITLE Joyce Chen cook book. Foreword by Paul Dudley White.
IMPRINT Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott [1962]
CALL NO. TX725 .C5173 1962.
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AC:
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CMDP:
Seems to me that most of these questions can be answered from the various books, and the trick is going to be developing your own perspective that goes beyond the readily available introductions. I think the magic word is geomancy (see the results of my google search for geomancy china needham)... and another from JSTOR, to add to the Andrew March one you noted in your log entry:Geomancy
Maurice Freedman
Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1968. (1968), pp. 5-15.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4169%281968%290%3A1968%3C5%3AG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q
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DH:
http://www.frpac.or.jp/english/e_index2.html (I haven't checked your pages to see, but since I tripped over it, I figured I'd send it on anyhow) ...and you might find some of the others on this page accessible: http://students.washington.edu/bjb5/Alices_Place/specificlanguages.htm while I'm at it: http://www.japan.co.jp/mid01.php?catkey=6689 ...and you might enjoy http://www.zompist.com/flash.html And while you're clicking on links, http://www.zompist.com/phrases.html is worth a visit......and some of these will turn out to be VERY useful: JSTOR Anthropology and Archaeology search
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JH:
Seems to me that you need a focus, so that the project isn't pulled in a lot of directions without ever getting beyond the superficial. You might FIND that focus by looking into one sport in detail (like ping pong/table tennis --See here for a teaser... or here... or here...). One possibility is to look at the elite end of sports, asking the question: what OLYMPIC activities have the various nationalities been prominent in? I did a google search for "olympic medals" japan and got some useful results as a starting place. The question then might be: ?how does Japan/China/Korea support the sports in which its athletes have been successful in the Olympic context.Frome there it's a matter of exploring, and then extracting things from what you find. For example, I did a google search for "wrestling team" china and got quite a few hits, one of which was to 2003 World Championships of Freestyle Wrestling team preview – women’s freestyle.
Point is, you need to do some exploring --I don't think there are all that many books on sports in East Asia topics, so the Web may be your best bet.
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CK:
I think the key is being CLEAR about what you mean by 'popular culture', a phrase that has been used pretty loosely. DO you mean (1) the elements of culture that are most widespread, and/or (2) the elements of culture that are characteristic of a particular group (like an age-set, or class- or gender-defined group), or maybe (3) elements of culture that are UNofficial (and maybe even disapproved by officialdom)?You'll probably find it easier to define a group (like: teenage girls, or urban adults, or pop music fans...) for which you can get information, combining news coverage and Web information and your own observation. My advice is to not to try to take on the whole enormous question.
For example: I recall reading someplace that cell phone use is pretty big in Korea. I did a google search for "smart mobs" korea and got a lot, but that's just the beginning of resources out there to consider that question.
Take a look at http://www.sogang.ac.kr/~glasstm/music.html and others from this google search, and this one too --and Anarchy in the UK, Solidarity in the ROK: Punk Rock Comes to Korea.
another: google korean "underground music"
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ML:
I tripped over this page while doing something else: http://www.jef.or.jp/en/jti/200301_013.html ...and at the bottom there's a SEARCH box. Try 'baseball' there...
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JL:
Perhaps focusing on Chinese communit[ies] in Costa Rica (or maybe in Central America generally) would be a good choice, since you have personal knowledge and (I imagine) people with whom you can communicate by e-mail. I did a quick google search for "central america" "chinese community" and got Welcome/Bienvenidos to the Chinese in Latin America Website, so you'd certainly be in interesting company with a project so defined!
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MM:
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AM:
http://www.frpac.or.jp/english/e_index2.html (I haven't checked your pages to see, but since I tripped over it, I figured I'd send it on anyhow) while I'm at it: http://www.japan.co.jp/mid01.php?catkey=6689 About the Basque-Ainu connection: I'm really VERY dubious, and so far as I can see only Edo Nyland is on that one. He's not a Linguist, and so doesn't have any academic credibility, for what that's worth. Nut theories about linguistic relationships are a fascinating subject (and especially with language isolates) --they usually start out with lexical similarities, but it's what they DON'T include or systematize that makes them easy targets for academic linguists. It's often where they DON'T overlap that's interesting --look, forinstance, at Ainu and Basque numbers: http://www.zompist.com/oldnum.htm , and http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm for more general discussion. And look at http://www.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/zheng/7tones/list?aaaaaBDla for more on Ainu language. Some of the links at https://slider-secure.vendercom.com/Science/Social_Sciences/Language_and_Linguistics/Natural_Languages/Ainu.htm might be useful.Some others to explore: Genetic Variation in Human Populations
Yellow Man’s Burden: Ainu Subjugation and the Development of Racist Ideology in Japan (Christopher Fields)
do a search in PubMed for 'ainu' to get 107 hits in biomedical literature
Genetic isolates: Separate but equal? (Leonid Kruglyak Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 1999 February 16; 96 (4): 1170–1172)...and some of these will turn out to be VERY useful: JSTOR Anthropology and Archaeology search
I also happen to know that this one has a chapter on the Ainu and their possible relations to Japanese prehistory:
AUTHOR Rouse, Irving, 1913- TITLE Migrations in prehistory : inferring population movement from cultural remains / Irving Rouse. IMPRINT New Haven : Yale University Press, c1986. CALL NO. GN370 .R68 1986.and a later addition:Take a look at AUTHOR Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (Luigi Luca), 1922- TITLE The history and geography of human genes / L. Luca Cavalli -Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, Alberto Piazza. IMPRINT Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1994. CALL NO. QH431 .C395 1994. for what there is about Ainu genetics (and even possibilities for estimating genetic distance from Basques). Pp. 231-232 have the clearest summary in text. Some of the analysis (pp 75-78, 82, 99, 203, 225, 230) is a bit difficult to follow, but in general it looks like most see Ainu as connected with the Jomon culture, displaced by Yayoi before the beginning of the Christian Era. from its bibliography I got a pointer to TITLE Windows on the Japanese past : studies in archaeology and prehistory / editor, Richard J. Pearson, coeditors Gina Lee Barnes, Karl L. Hutterer. IMPRINT Ann Arbor, MI : Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1986. CALL NO. GN855.J2 W56 1986. --see Howells article, pp 85-99
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PS:
One thing that strikes me as I look at http://www.lib.duke.edu/ias/eac/popculture/guide.htm (some of which we have in the library) is that it's the very NATURE of 'popular culture' to change, so that a 1992 Guide or Encyclopedia has little or no connection to what's going on now. Getting a handle on the present is chancy, unless one can see into Japan's present. Newspapers might be one way, and of course TV if only we could get access to everyday Japanese TV.One thing you might do is compare those j-pop compendia, and find out just how much they do and don't overlap, given their publication dates.
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MS:
Your book sources will probably have a lot of the answers to those questions. You may already have found http://www.fix.co.jp/kabuki/kabuki.html which has a couple of mpgs, and check out the Bibliography to see whether we have some of the books mentioned. I also happened on http://russia-japan.nm.ru/yaponovedy_anarina_01e.htm ...and doubtless there's a lot more out there on the Web. The problem will be finding your OWN take on it, to get beyond repeating the basics.
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RW:
Very interesting questions, and the links I sent you last week look like they'd be quite useful in answering some of them. You may find that you'll want to limit to a comparison of two or three novelists, asking the questions of each, since they preszent different facets of answers. One that's probably JUST what you want is:AUTHOR Jen, Gish. TITLE Typical American / Gish Jen. IMPRINT Boston : Houghton Mifflin, c1991. CALL NO. PS3560.E474 T9 1991.(see a review --and look into her other books too!)added later:
AUTHOR Zia, Helen. TITLE Asian American dreams : the emergence of an American people / Helen Zia. IMPRINT New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. CALL NO. E184.O6 Z53 2000. TITLE Yell-oh girls! : emerging voices explore culture, identity, and growing up Asian American / [edited by] Vickie Nam. IMPRINT New York : Quill, c2001. CALL NO. E184.O6 Y45 2001. AUTHOR Chow, Claire S. TITLE Leaving deep water : Asian American women at the crossroads of two cultures / Claire S. Chow. IMPRINT New York : Plume, [1999] CONTENTS Growing up Asian, growing up American -- Coming of age -- One of those 4.0 piano-playing Asians -- Between mothers and daughters : love and guilt -- Fathers and daughters : love, power, and control -- Choosing a partner -- Marriage and divorce : coming together, coming apart -- How we were raised, how we are raising our children -- On the job -- Blending in or standing out : stories of racism and discrimination -- Ethnicity and identity : what it means to be Asian American -- Ethnicity and identity : creating a sense of self -- Naming names -- A sense of belonging : a place to call home -- Becoming my own person : a woman in her own right -- Grief and its aftermath -- Immigration stories -- Growing older : looking ahead, looking back. CALL NO. E184.O6 C49 1999.
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KZ:
A lot of those are empirical questions --i.e., data exist to answer them, and then it becomes a matter of trying to assess how the picture is changing over time, and/or across space. To take one example, I did a google search for china "domestic violence" and found quite a bit of evidence, including some from HK University theses online. See also SPECIFIC RACIAL / ETHNIC GROUPS AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE U.S. (Chinese listings)'Gender roles' is a bit of a tarbaby: there's an embarassingly huge heap of stuff resulting from a google chinese "gender roles" search... the problem is to find the needle in that haystack. Even a source like Sex Roles produces a plethora... so if you really want to go there, you'll have to figure out something to limit by. Glance at Chinese Language and Gender and "chinese women" employment...
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