Japan is one of the most urbanized and industrialized countries in the world. Yet the Japanese continue to practise a variety of religious rituals and ceromonies that would appear to be at variance with the high-tech and highly regimented nature of Japanese society. Ceremony and Ritual in Japan focuses on the traditional and religious aspects of Japanese society from an anthropological perspective, presenting new material and making cross-cultural comparisons. The chapters in this collection cover topics as diverse as funerals and mourning, sweeping, women's roles in ritual, the division of...

For a time it was almost a cliche to say that anthropology was a handmaiden of colonialism - by which was usually meant Western colonialism - and this insinuation was assumed to somehow weaken the theoretical claims of anthropology and its fieldwork achievements.

For a time it was almost a cliche to say that anthropology was a handmaiden of colonialism - by which was usually meant 'Western' colonialism. And this insinuation was assumed to somehow weaken the theoretical claims of anthropology and its fieldwork achievements. What this collection demonstrates is that colonialism was not only a Western phenomenon, but 'Eastern' as well. And that Japanese or Chinese anthropologists were also engaged in studying subject peoples. But wherever they were and whoever they were anthropologists always had a complex and problematic relationship with the colonial...