This set of volumes is part of the major new series, published by Curzon Press under the Japan Library imprint, features the collected writings of many of the most outstanding western scholars who have been actively writing about Japan and connected subjects over the last half century. Developed in close collaboration with the participating scholars, each volume contains a wide and substantial cross-section of their writings, thematically structured around essays, including published and unpublished conference and symposium papers, contributions to refereed journals, chapters from...

This important new and original study on the institution of the Japanese emperors, from their mythological beginnings to the present day, focuses on the enigma of the institution itself, namely, the extraordinary continuity of the Japanese dynasty, which is unknown anywhere else in the world, yet which is now at risk on account of more recent laws of succession. The prisms through which this remarkable achievement is examined are the notions of divinity, gender and subservience. The volume is divided into nine sections: Strange Survival; The Feminine Beginnings of the Japanese Monarchy;...

This volume of the Collected Writings of Modern Western Scholars on Japan brings together the work of Ben-Ami Shillony on modern history, crisis and culture, Japan and the Jews.