This somewhat misleadingly titled collection is an assemblage of papers given at the 1998 Third International Asian Music Conference in Seoul. As the foreword more accurately states, the subject is the "interface" of East Asian, European and American music, how one influences the other -- what the editors call "transculturation."
One plain example of this transculturation follows the adventures in the West of the shakuhachi, the bamboo flute. The instrument has proven so popular that one of the masters at the 1997 World Shakuhachi Festival, noticing the local lack of practitioners in Japan, predicted that "the tradition will migrate to America." In addition, its sound can be "translated" into the musical dialect of the West. The composer Toru Takemitsu transferred "the timbre and articulations of the shakuhachi onto the Western flute."
This cross-culturalization works for non-Japanese composers as well. Henry Cowell uses vocal styles ("sliding tones") from the Chinese opera in many compositions. John Cage uses not only Asian sound sources, but also Asian justifications -- the "I Ching" ("Book of Changes") system -- for compositional choice. And the reverse tide, the influence of Western music on Eastern is of tsunami-like proportions.