Kategoria BISAC: History >> Asia - Japan

On March 1, 1954, the U.S. exploded a hydrogen bomb at Bikini in the South Pacific. The fifteen-megaton bomb was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and its fallout spread far beyond the official "no-sail" zone the U.S. had designated. Fishing just outside the zone at the time of the blast, the Lucky Dragon #5 was showered with radioactive ash. Making the difficult voyage back to their home port of Yaizu, twenty-year-old Oishi Matashichi and his shipmates became ill from maladies they could not comprehend. They were all hospitalized with radiation...

Healing lies at the heart of Zen in the home, as Paula Arai discovered in her pioneering research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen. She reveals a vital stream of religious practice that flourishes outside the bounds of formal institutions through sacred rites that women develop and transmit to one another. Everyday objects and common materials are used in inventive ways. For example, polishing cloths, vivified by prayer and mantra recitation, become potent tools. The creation of beauty through the arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement become rites of...

Recognized in Japan as a connoisseur, collector, and proprietor of a famous folk art shop in Tokyo, Tawara Yusaku returned to painting late in life and had a single show in London before his death in 2004. Universe Is Flux is the first examination of his accomplishments within the context of Asian and contemporary painting.

Tawara's artistic vision was highly influenced by Buddhist concepts of cosmology and space. His philosophy revolved around the idea that the universe is in a constant state of flux - that flux itself is the stuff of the universe. The impermanent bunching...

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 38 meters in some places, it was compounded by a nuclear meltdown. This enormous tragedy, claiming some 24,000 lives, and displacing more than 500,000 people initially, exceeds the disaster preparedness of Japan.

This book brings together the analysis and insights of a group of distinguished experts on Japan to examine what happened, how various institutions and actors responded and...

What is Buddhism? According to Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, the answer lies in neither Ch'an nor Zen; in neither the Kyoto school of philosophy nor the non-duality taught in the Vimalakirti Sutra. Hakamaya contends that "criticism alone is Buddhism."

This volume introduces and analyzes the ideas of "critical Buddhism" in relation to the targets of its critique and situates those ideas in the context of current discussions of postmodern academic scholarship, the separation of the disinterested scholar and committed religious practitioner, and the place of social activism...

Digital technology has transformed cinema's production, distribution, and consumption patterns and pushed contemporary cinema toward increasingly global markets. In the case of Japanese cinema, a once moribund industry has been revitalized as regional genres such as anime and Japanese horror now challenge Hollywood's preeminence in global cinema. In her rigorous investigations of J-horror, personal documentary, anime, and ethnic cinema, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano deliberates on the role of the transnational in bringing to the mainstream what were formerly marginal B-movie genres. She argues...

This is the story of seven epic assaults from the sea against murderous enemy fire--Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo...

The 1930s was a dark period in international affairs. The Great Depression affected the economic and social circumstances of the world's major powers, contributing to armed conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. This volume focuses exclusively on Japan, which witnessed a flurry of progressive activities in this period, activities which served both domestic and international society during the "tumultuous decade."

Featuring an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars, Tumultuous Decade examines Japanese domestic and foreign affairs...