D. R. Howland explores China s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of brushtalk, in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the...

This reflection on colonial culture argues for an examination of Indochina as a fictive and mythic construct, a phantasmatic legacy of French colonialism in Southeast Asia. Panivong Norindr uses postcolonial theory to demonstrate how French imperialism manifests itself not only through physical domination of geographic entities, but also through the colonization of the imaginary. In this careful reading of architecture, film, and literature, Norindr lays bare the processes of fantasy, desire, and nostalgia constituent of French territorial aggression against Indochina.
Analyzing the first...

This reflection on colonial culture argues for an examination of Indochina as a fictive and mythic construct, a phantasmatic legacy of French colonialism in Southeast Asia. Panivong Norindr uses postcolonial theory to demonstrate how French imperialism manifests itself not only through physical domination of geographic entities, but also through the colonization of the imaginary. In this careful reading of architecture, film, and literature, Norindr lays bare the processes of fantasy, desire, and nostalgia constituent of French territorial aggression against Indochina.
Analyzing the first...

Monsters, ghosts, the supernatural, the fantastic, the mysterious. These are not usually considered the stuff of modernism. More often they are regarded as inconsequential to the study of the modern, or, at best, seen as representative of traditional beliefs that are overcome and left behind in the transformation toward modernity. In Civilization and Monsters Gerald Figal asserts that discourse on the fantastic was at the heart of the historical configuration of Japanese modernity that the representation of the magical and mysterious played an integral part in the production of...

The poetry of the Heian court of Japan has typically been linked with the emergence of a distinct Japanese language and culture. This concept of a linguistically homogeneous and ethnically pure Japaneseness has been integral to the construction of a modern Japanese nation, especially during periods of western colonial expansion and cultural encroachment. But Thomas LaMarre argues in Uncovering Heian Japan that this need for a cultural unity a singular Japanese identity has resulted in an overemphasis of a relatively minor aspect of Heian poetry, obscuring not only its other significant...

Over the past few decades, many young Japanese women have emerged as Japan s most enthusiastic internationalists, investing in study or work abroad, or in romance with Western men as opportunities to circumvent what they consider their country s oppressive corporate and family structures. Drawing on a rich supply of autobiographical narratives, as well as literary and cultural texts, Karen Kelsky situates this phenomenon against a backdrop of profound social change in Japan and within an intricate network of larger global forces.
In exploring the promises, limitations, and...

Over the past few decades, many young Japanese women have emerged as Japan s most enthusiastic internationalists, investing in study or work abroad, or in romance with Western men as opportunities to circumvent what they consider their country s oppressive corporate and family structures. Drawing on a rich supply of autobiographical narratives, as well as literary and cultural texts, Karen Kelsky situates this phenomenon against a backdrop of profound social change in Japan and within an intricate network of larger global forces.
In exploring the promises, limitations, and...

In Staging the World Rebecca E. Karl rethinks the production of nationalist discourse in China during the late Qing period, between China s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the proclamation of the Republic in 1911. She argues that at this historical moment a growing Chinese identification with what we now call the Third World first made the modern world visible as a totality and that the key components of Chinese nationalist discourse developed in reference to this worldview.
The emergence of Chinese nationalism during this period is often portrayed as following from...

In Staging the World Rebecca E. Karl rethinks the production of nationalist discourse in China during the late Qing period, between China s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the proclamation of the Republic in 1911. She argues that at this historical moment a growing Chinese identification with what we now call the Third World first made the modern world visible as a totality and that the key components of Chinese nationalist discourse developed in reference to this worldview.
The emergence of Chinese nationalism during this period is often portrayed as following from...

The Flash of Capital analyzes the links between Japan s capitalist history and its film history, illuminating what these connections reveal about film culture and everyday life in Japan. Looking at a hundred-year history of film and capitalism, Eric Cazdyn theorizes a cultural history that highlights the spaces where film and the nation transcend their customary borders where culture and capital crisscross and, in doing so, develops a new way of understanding historical change and transformation in modern Japan and beyond.
Cazdyn focuses on three key moments of historical...