Kanno Suga and Kaneko Fumika were both found guilty on different occasions in 1911 and 1926 of conspiring to assassinate the Japanese emperor. Kanno was executed and Kaneko hanged herself whilst in prison, but both women maintained their defiance of the State even in the face of death. Through examination of their own life stories and writings, Helene Bowen Raddeker brings to life the women's own interpretations of their lives and their attitudes to death, with the associations of political martyrdom, heroism and notions of immortality. She finds that their self-presentations became weapons...

More than 50 years on from the end of World War II, relations between Japan and Russia have yet to be normalized. The so called Northern Territories dispute has proved to be a major stumbling block in preventing the two countries from formally signing a peace treaty to end the war. In this volume Kimie Hara reviews the territorial dispute and the problems of political rapproachement in terms of foreign policy decision-making between the two countries. She uses four bilateral summits as case studies to explore patterns, changes and tendencies in the decision-making process. They lead her to...

This book explores the myth, so abused by the mass media, that the Japanese are a grey, anonymous mass of efficient, obedient workers. The book's truly international contributors examine the role in modern Japanese society of a range of leisure and play activities, from drinking to travel, football to karaoke, tattoos to rock fandom.

Generally, biologists and mathematicians who study the shape and form of organisms have been largely working in isolation from those who work on evolutionary relationships through the analysis of common characteristics. Increasingly however, dialogue between the two communities is beginning to develop - but other than a handful of journal papers, there has been no formal, published discussion on this subject. This book summarizes the interdisciplinary work that has taken place to date and should stimulate additional research into these topics.

Traditional economics treats the defining subjective properties of economic agents (tastes, preferences, demands, goals and perceptions) as if they are determined independently of individual and collective relations with other agents. This collection of essays reflects the increasingly common view that economics cannot continue to disregard all economic phenomena inconsistent with this conception.
The volume is especially concerned with the idea of intersubjective influences on market outcomes. A team of expert international contributors have been brought together to address the question...