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Since its incorporation into the Japanese nation-state in 1879, Okinawa has been seen by both Okinawans and Japanese as an exotic “South,” both spatially and temporally distinct from modern Japan. In The Limits of Okinawa, Wendy Matsumura traces the emergence of this sense of Okinawan difference, showing how local and mainland capitalists, intellectuals, and politicians attempted to resolve clashes with labor by appealing to the idea of a unified Okinawan community. Their numerous confrontations with small producers and cultivators who refused to be exploited for the sake of this ideal produced and reproduced “Okinawa” as an organic, transhistorical entity. Informed by recent Marxist attempts to expand the understanding of the capitalist mode of production to include the production of subjectivity, Matsumura provides a new understanding of Okinawa's place in Japanese and world history, and it establishes a new locus for considering the relationships between empire, capital, nation, and identity.
This book is a new study of the leading seventeenth-century samurai Confucian, Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91). It describes his stormy life as a samurai, his interpretation of Confucian philosophy, and his imaginative commentary on Japan's greatest literary monument, The Tale of Genji. More than warrior and philosopher, Banzan is presented as a critic of the Japanese society of his day.
Cataclysm 1914 brings together a number of leftist scholars from a variety of fields to explore the many different aspects of the origins, trajectories and consequences of the First World War. The collection not only aims to examine the war itself, but seeks to visualise the conflict and all its immediate consequences (such as the Bolshevik Revolution and ascendency of US hegemony) as a defining moment—perhaps the defining moment—in 20th century world politics rupturing and reconstituting the ‘modern’ epoch in its many instantiations. In doing so, the collection takes up a variety of different topics of interest to both a general reader, those focused on Marxian theory and strategy, and leftist and socialist histories of the war. Contributors are: Alexander Anievas, Shelley Baranowski, Neil Davidson, Geoff Eley, Sandra Halperin, Esther Leslie, Lars T. Lih, Domenico Losurdo, Wendy Matsumura, Peter D. Thomas, Adam Tooze, Alberto Toscano, and Enzo Traverso.
Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Interdependent Partners: The Shogunate, Satsuma, and Tsushima -- The Reaction against Globalization -- Guarded Engagement -- Domestic Demand and Foreign Trade -- Local Japan Encounters the West -- The Transition in Foreign Trade -- Defending the Domain and the Realm -- The End of Domain Agency and the Adoption of International Relations -- Works Cited -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.
Today, Americans are some of the world’s biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. These national partialities, Robert Hellyer reveals, are deeply entwined. Tracing the transpacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, Green with Milk and Sugar shows how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries. Hellyer explores the forgotten American penchant for Japanese green tea and how it shaped Japanese tastes. In the nineteenth century, Americans favored green teas, which were imported from China until Japan developed an export industry centered on the United States. The inf...