Rich in primary sources and featuring contributions from scholars on both sides of the Pacific, Issei Buddhism in the Americas upends boundaries and categories that have tied Buddhism to Asia and illuminates the social and spiritual role that the religion has played in the Americas. While Buddhists in Japan had long described the migration of the religion as traveling from India, across Asia, and ending in Japan, this collection details the movement of Buddhism across the Pacific to the Americas. Leading the way were pioneering, first-generation Issei priests and their followers who established temples, shared Buddhist teachings, and converted non-Buddhists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book explores these pioneering efforts in the context of Japanese diasporic communities and immigration history and the early history of Buddhism in the Americas. The result is a dramatic exploration of the history of Asian immigrant religion that encompasses such topics as Japanese language instruction in Hawaiian schools, the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia, the roles of Buddhist song culture, Tenriyko ministers in America, and Zen Buddhism in Brazil. Contributors are Michihiro Ama, Noriko Asato, Masako Iino, Tomoe Moriya, Lori Pierce, Cristina Rocha, Keiko Wells, Duncan Ry\u00fbken Williams, and Akihiro Yamakura.

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was a popular form of 'black face' entertainment in early 19th century America, influencing American vernacular songs and stage performances, but its popularity travelled beyond America, across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. When Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in Yokohama on 1853, for example, the American sailors organized a blackface minstrel band and performed the minstrels' hit songs. This 4-volume facsimile collection focuses on early minstrelsy material, particularly songs and performance records. Included are songbooks of famous Christy Minstrels, a performance guide for amateur troupes, sheet music and playbills, books that explore minstrelsy history. Numerous photos, illustrations and plates are also included. The material gathered together is a unique and valuable primary source on the early history of American popular culture. Moreover, it provides an important historical view of the discriminative stereotypes of African American people from which they still suffer.

Published by EPM in Japan and distributed outside of Japan by Routledge

- The first major reprint collection of African-American music, including negro spirituals, slave songs, and African-American folk songs: crucial cultural artefacts for those seeking to understand the development of African-American culture and its acceptance by mainstream American society.

- The collection brings together nine publications published from the Civil War to the early twentieth century when interest in African-American music started rapidly to develop outside its own milieu.

- Indispensable source of information to research the development of African-American culture, music, religion, and social movement.