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The term Asia is a problematic and highly artificial construct as hardly anything—language, religion, politics, or even geography—unites this huge area. Within the context of this study, however—which focuses on parts of South, Southeast, and East Asia (home to the vast majority of the population)—there exists a unifying factor of paramount significance, and that is rice. Not only is rice the staple food in these regions, it is the focal point of a pervasive set of interrelated beliefs and practices. For those who consume it, this foodstuff is considered divinely given and is felt to sustain them in a special way, one that may be understood as constitutional and even spiritual. This volume explores beliefs and practices relating to rice as they are made manifest in the unique arts and material cultures of the various peoples considered.

Incorporating essays by twenty-seven authors representing a wide variety of cultures and writing from diverse perspectives, the book is astounding in its multivocality. The thirty-five lavishly illustrated essays describe rice-related rituals and beliefs in parts of Thailand, Nepal, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, China, and Korea. Throughout, the juxtaposition of magnificent photographs of works of art—paintings, prints, ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, and sculpture—with objects of a more humble nature—agricultural implements, rice-straw ornaments, cooking utensils, baskets, puppets, votive plaques, and so forth—serves to indicate the striking pervasiveness of rice in all aspects and all walks of life. Wedding ceremonies, parades, festivals, celebrations of birth, rites held to honor the rice goddess, and those performed to insure success at every step in the rice-growing cycle are vividly described and illustrated with striking field photographs. The whole gives the reader the rare opportunity to compare the similarities and the differences with which a rich array of Asian cultures view the food that nourishes them.

Art --- History of civilization --- woodcuts [prints] --- Edo [Japanese period] --- cremation urns --- shadow theater --- Oryza [genus] --- gods [deities] --- goddesses --- rural life --- Asian --- Han [Chinese, culture, style, period] --- Qing [dynastic styles and periods] --- Zen [Japanese Buddhism] --- Philippines --- Bengal --- China --- South Korea --- Japan --- India --- Nepal --- Thailand --- Java --- Bali [island] --- Indonesia --- Vietnam --- Asia