Kategoria BISAC: History >> Asia - Japan

Many Japanese people consider themselves to be part of an essentially unchanging and isolated ethnic unit in which the biological, linguistic, and cultural aspects of Japanese identity overlap almost completely with each other. In its examination of the processes of ethnogenesis (the formation of ethnic groups) in the Japanese Islands, Ruins of Identity offers an approach to ethnicity that differs fundamentally from that found in most Japanese scholarship and popular discourse. Following an extensive discussion of previous theories on the formation of Japanese language, race, and culture...

The political influence of temples in premodern Japan, most clearly manifested in divine demonstrations--where rowdy monks and shrine servants brought holy symbols to the capital to exert pressure on courtiers--has traditionally been condemned and is poorly understood. In an impressive examination of this intriguing aspect of medieval Japan, the author employs a wide range of previously neglected sources to argue that religious protest was a symptom of political factionalism in the capital rather than its cause. It is his contention that religious violence can be traced primarily to...

New in paperback.

Of related interest:
A History of Writing in Japan, by Christopher Seeley

As part of its program to promote democracy in Japan after World War II, the American Occupation, headed by General Douglas MacArthur, undertook to enforce rigid censorship policies aimed at eliminating all traces of feudal thought in media and entertainment, including kabuki. Faubion Bowers (1917-1999), who served as personal aide and interpreter to MacArthur during the Occupation, was appalled by the censorship policies and anticipated the extinction of a great theatrical art. He used his position in the Occupation administration and his knowledge of Japanese theatre in his tireless...

Divisions of Labor positions the ideological and organizational evolution of the Japanese labor movement within the larger historical currents that shaped and organized labor globally in the twentieth century. Interspersing detailed narratives of Japanese labor history with analyses of parallel developments in Western European and international labor movements, Lonny Carlile shows how world views and labor movement strategies were shared across national boundaries and shaped in similar ways in the industrialized West and East. Beyond this, he highlights how in both Western Europe and Japan...

On July 29, 1643, ten crew members of the Dutch yacht Breskens were lured ashore at Nambu in northern Japan. Once out of view of their ship, the men were bound and taken to the shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, in Edo, where they remained imprisoned for four months. Later the Japanese government forced the Dutch East India Company representative in Nagasaki to acknowledge that the sailors had in fact been saved from shipwreck and that official recognition of the rescue (i.e., a formal visit from a Dutch ambassador) was in order.

Prisoners from Nambu provides a lively, engrossing narrative...

On September 13, 1912, the day of Emperor Meiji's funeral, General Nogi Maresuke committed ritual suicide by seppuku (disembowelment). It was an act of delayed atonement that paid a debt of honor incurred thirty-five years earlier. The revered military hero's wife joined in his act of junshi (following one's lord into death). The violence of their double suicide shocked the nation. What had impelled the general and his wife, on the threshold of a new era, to resort so drastically, so dramatically, to this forbidden, anachronistic practice? The nation was divided. There were those who saw...

This exceptionally rich set of essays substantially advances our understanding of the Heian era, presenting the period as more fascinating, multi-faceted, and integrated than it has ever been before. This volume marks a turning point in the study of early Japanese culture and will be indispensable for future explorations of the era. --Andrew Edmund Goble, University of Oregon

As a Japanese historian, I enthusiastically recommend Heian Japan, Centers and Peripheries, the first multi-author English-language academic work to offer a synthetic treatment of the Heian period. Japan's...

A thousand years ago, most visitors to Japan would have arrived by ship at Hakata Bay, the one and only authorized gateway to Japan. Hakata was the location of the Korokan, an official guest-house for foreign visitors that is currently yielding its secrets to the spades of Japanese archaeologists. Nearby was Dazaifu, the imperial capital of western Japan, surrounded by mountain fortresses and defended by an army of border guards. Over the ages, Hakata was a staging ground for Japanese troops on their way to Korea and ground zero for foreign invasions of Japan. Through the port passed a...

This directory in three volumes updates the second edition of the Directory of Japan Specialists and Japanese Studies Institutions in the United States and Canada, which was published in 1995 as a joint project of The Japan Foundation and the Association for Asian Studies. Like its predecessors, it has two aims: first, to make Japan specialists, Japanese studies programs, and their collective expertise more visible and accessible to those outside the field; and, second, to help those involved in Japanese studies stay in touch with one another. It includes 1,480 Japan specialists, 266 full...