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After the Meiji Restoration of 1868 Japan modernized rapidly, transforming itself perhaps more quickly than any other country in history. However, the change was not without its conflicts, many of them still unresolved as the pleasures of modern society vie with a respect for the traditional Japanese lifestyle. As the literature of change and of the young, science fiction acts as a window to the modern mind and the uneasy alliance of the old and new. This book, filled with detailed reference to numerous stories, traces the origin and development of the genre from the mid-nineteenth century to today, thus exploring unique insights into Japanese attitudes to commercialism, spirituality, the media, war and international relations.
Endö Shüsaka is probably the most widely translated of all Japanese authors. In this first major study of Endö's works, Mark Williams moves the discussion on from the well-worn depictions of Endö as the 'Japanese Graham Greene', and places him in his own political and cultural context.
This fully revised and updated third edition of Japanese Economic Development looks at Japan's economic history from the nineteenth century through to World War II, recasting analysis of Japan’s economic past in the light fresh theoretical perspectives in the study of economic history and development. Francks draws out the historical roots of the institutions and practices on which Japan's post-war economic miracle was based and provides a comparative framework within which the Japanese case can be understood and related to development in the rest of the world. New features for this edition include: textboxes summarising key concepts expanded coverage of the early-modern economy, the ‘tr...
The Japanese education system, while widely praised in western countries, is subject to heavy criticism within Japan. Education Reform in Japan analyses this criticism, and explains why proposed reforms have failed. The author shows how the Japanese policy-making process can become paralysed when there is disagreement, and argues that this `immobilism' can affect other areas of Japanese policy-making.
This book is a study of everyday life in rural north China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century told through the story of one man’s life.
This book questions many of Britain's idiosyncratic attitudes towards education. Dimensions missing from Britain's recent reforms, but present in Japan are highlighted. The author argues that Britain could learn a lot from Japan in order to improve education and vocational training considerably.
Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the outside world in the late-nineteenth century. This compelling in-depth analysis reconstructs the lives of some of the thousands of male and female migrants who left Japan for work in Hawai'i, Southeast Asia and Australia. These stories bring together transpacific historiographies of settler colonialism, labour history and resource extraction in new ways. Drawing on an unconventional and deeply material archive, from gravestones to government files, paintings to song, and from digitized records to the very earth itself, Dusinberre addresses key questions of method and authorial positionality in the writing of global history. This engaging investigation into archival practice asks, what is the global archive, where is it cited, and who are 'we' as we cite it? This title is also available as Open Access.
Over recent years, there has been increasing interest in the relationship between China and Japan, particularly as a way of understanding contemporary political, economic and security developments within the whole East Asia region. Caroline Rose presents a thorough, balanced and objective examination of both sides of the relationship. This will be of great interest to academics and policy-makers in the UK and US, as well as to professionals working in Chinese and Japanese communities.
The first book-length study to examine the re-writing of school textbooks by the Japanese Education Ministry in an attempt to play down atrocities in China during World War II. The famous textbook crisis in 1982 was at the centre of a diplomatic storm extending through the 1980s as Sino-Japanese relations were beset by a series of political controversies. This fascinating account of the period reveals that Chinese and Japanese policy-makers were more concerned with changes taking place in international and domestic politics than with adopting a correct view of history.