Kategoria BISAC: History >> Asia - Japan

Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) was one of modern Japan's most unique and important critics of capitalism, the emperor system, imperialism, and everyday life in wartime Japan. This collection of translations contains some of Tosaka's most important essays and original articles on Tosaka.

The inspiration for the Jedi knights of Star Wars and the films of Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese samurai have captured modern imaginations. Yet with these elite warriors who were bound by a code of honor called Bushido--the Way of the Warrior--the reality behind the myth proves more fascinating than any fiction. In Samurai, celebrated author John Man provides a unique and captivating look at their true history, told through the life of one man: Saigo Takamori, known to many as "the last samurai." In 1877 Takamori led a rebel army of samurai in a heroic "last...

Written by the court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian period, describing the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion, and whim dominated, while harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance. Moving elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society, and her own flirtations, Sei Shonagon provides a witty and intimate window on a woman's life at...

Fully revised and updated, this widely-praised introductory text explores Japan through the prism of three alternative perspectives: Mainstream, revisionist and culturalist. Beginning with the notion of Japan as a 'contested territory' the book focuses on debates about the real nature of Japan's successes and shortcomings.

Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene...

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan plunged the country into a state of crisis. As the nation struggled to recover from a record breaking magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that was as high as thirty-eight meters in some places, news trickled out that Fukushima had experienced meltdowns in three reactors. These tragic catastrophes claimed some 20,000 lives, initially displacing some 500,000 people and overwhelming Japan's formidable disaster preparedness.

This book brings together the analysis and insights of a group of distinguished experts on Japan to examine what...

The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that focuses on contemporary Japan and the social and cultural trends that are important at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This Handbook provides a cutting-edge and comprehensive survey of significant phenomena, institutions, and directions in Japan today, on issues ranging from gender and family, the environment, race and ethnicity, and urban life, to popular culture and electronic media. Written by an international team of Japan experts, the chapters included in the...

The film star is not simply an actor but a historical phenomenon that derives from the production of an actor's attractiveness, the circulation of his or her name and likeness, and the support of media consumers. This book analyzes the establishment and transformation of the transnational film star system and the formations of historically important film stars--Japanese and non-Japanese--and casts new light on Japanese modernity as it unfolded between the 1910s and 1930s.

Hideaki Fujiki illustrates how film stardom and the star system emerged and evolved, touching on such facets as...

In the late 1800s, as Japanese leaders mulled over the usefulness of religion in modernizing their country, they chose to invite Unitarian missionaries to Japan. This book spotlights one facet of debates sparked by the subsequent encounter between Unitarianism and Buddhism an intersection that has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Focusing on the cascade of events triggered by the missionary presence of the American Unitarian Association on Japanese soil between 1887 and 1922, Michel Mohr s study sheds new light on this formative time in Japanese religious and...

Gathering for the first time all of Claude Levi-Strauss s writings on Japanese civilization, "The Other Face of the Moon" forms a sustained meditation into the French anthropologist s dictum that to understand one s own culture, one must regard it from the point of view of another.

Exposure to Japanese art was influential in Levi-Strauss s early intellectual growth, and between 1977 and 1988 he visited the country five times. The essays, lectures, and interviews of this volume, written between 1979 and 2001, are the product of these journeys. They investigate an astonishing range of...

In many societies today, educational aims or goals are commonly characterized in terms of "equality," "equal opportunity," "equal access" or "equal rights," the underlying assumption being that "equality" in some form is an intelligible and sensible educational ideal. Yet, there are different views and lively debates about what sort of equality should be pursued; in particular, the issue of equality of educational opportunity has served as justification for much of the postwar restructuring of educational systems around the world. The author explores different interpretations of the...

Sixty years after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and FDR's Executive Order 9066 making possible the incarceration of over 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent (two thirds of them American citizens) one question remains unresolved: "Could it happen again?" To the writers in this book--novelists, memoirists, poets, activists, scholars, students, professionals--the WWII internment of Japanese Americans in the detention camps of the west is an unfinished chapter of American history. Former internees and their children join with others in challenging readers to construct a better future...

In The Logic of Conformity, Tomoko T. Okagaki examines Japan's entry into the European state system in the late nineteenth century. Okagaki focuses on the extraordinary degree of conformity that Japan demonstrated in accommodating itself to Western norms of international relations within a very short period of time. By introducing a political science perspective to the study of Japan's modernization, which has heretofore been studied mostly as a historical subject, she emphasizes the significance of contextual factors that constrained the ways in which Japan entered international...

Japanese companies operating internationally resemble Western multinationals only superficially. They are 'reluctant' because outward economic dependency compels them to venture overseas - into environments where they cannot enjoy the same high degree of control and support that they do in Japan. There is no generally accepted view of Japanese management among writers in Europe and America and yet effective management has been a major factor in the advance of Japanese companies. The different approaches to Japanese management and its basic concepts are discussed here, together with the...

At the end of the Pacific War in 1945, Japan laid down her arms and submitted to US technological superiority. The situation today is radically different, with Japan leading in many areas of advanced technology - with armed forces and weaponry the match of many NATO countries. Malcolm McIntosh analyses Japan's role in the Pacific, her relations with other Superpowers, as well as the trade and investment for which Japan is now famed and feared.

First published in 1986, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

This account of the Japanese Shipping Industry treats both the shipping lines and the shipbuilding industry, focusing principally upon the economic developments, following the growth and boom of the 1950s and 60s. The perspective is wide-ranging and the authors relate Japanese shipping not only to the national economy and that of SE Asia but to the world shipping industry as a whole.

First published in 1990, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

An account of the situation which brought about the privatization of JNR in 1987, the processes of privatization, break-up and deregulation, and the new private railway companies. This account is seen in the context of the Japanese transport system as a whole, and takes into account the differing requirements of urban and rural areas.

First published in 1998, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.