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Violent, sensual, and seemingly un-Japanese, the stories in Season of Violence nevertheless depict Japanese teenagers of the present in compulsive but often unconscious revolt against the moral codes of "old Japan." Yet these stories tell of youth who offer no real, modern morality to replace the old—only the anti-morality of indiscriminate sex, brutality, and living for today's pleasures and sensations. These are stories of teenagers who came to be known as Taiyozoku— the Sun Tribe. Season of Violence won for its young author, Shintaro Ishihara, Japan's coveted Akutagawa Prize. Thus, Season of Violence is a good deal more than fast-moving, forcefully written fiction; it is vital social commentary on contemporary Japan which gives unexpected dimension to the traditional cardboard image of the Japanese student as somber, diligent, and obedient. Ishihara's stories of Japanese who were born in the ashes of war and defeat and raised in the fast-moving world of the postwar boom are stark accounts of a period when the values of the past have been discarded for misguided materialism and pleasure-seeking.
Asserts that as Japan moves toward economic and technological supremacy it will no longer be content to play second fiddle to the United States in world affairs.
Ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the transnational practices of Chinese elites, showing how they constitute a dispersed Chinese public, but also how they reinforce the strength of capital and the state.
Exploring one of the most dynamic and contested regions of the world, this series includes works on political, economic, cultural, and social changes in modern and contemporary Asia and the Pacific.
A novel that “considers the agency . . . women exert over their bodies and charts the emotional underpinnings of physical changes . . . with humor and empathy” (The New Yorker). On a sweltering summer day, Makiko travels from Osaka to Tokyo, where her sister Natsu lives. She is in the company of her daughter, Midoriko, who has lately grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with adolescence. Over the course of their few days together in the capital, Midoriko’s silence will prove a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and family secrets. On yet another summer’s day eight years later, Natsu, during a journey back to her nati...
Over the past few centuries, as Western civilization has enjoyed an expansive and flexible geographic domain, Westerners have observed other cultures with little interest in a return gaze. In turn, these other civilizations have been similarly disinclined when they have held sway. Clearly, though, an external frame of reference outstrips introspection—we cannot see ourselves as others see us. Unprecedented in its scope, What the Rest Think of the West provides a rich historical look through the eyes of outsiders as they survey and scrutinize the politics, science, technology, religion, family practices, and gender roles of civilizations not their own. The book emphasizes the broader figura...
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Few institutions are as well suited as the monarchy to provide a window on postwar Japan. The monarchy, which is also a family, has been significant both as a political and as a cultural institution. This comprehensive study analyzes numerous issues, including the role of individual emperors in shaping the institution, the manner in which the emperor’s constitutional position as symbol has been interpreted, the emperor’s intersection with politics through ministerial briefings, memories of Hirohito’s wartime role, nationalistic movements in support of Foundation Day and the reign-name system, and the remaking of the once sacrosanct throne into a "monarchy of the masses" embedded in the postwar culture of democracy. The author stresses the monarchy’s "postwarness," rather than its traditionality.
The best scholarship on the development of contemporary Japan This collection presents well over 100 scholarly articles on modern Japanese society, written by leading scholars in the field. These selections have been drawn from the most distinguished scholarly journals as well as from journals that are less well known among specialists; and the articles represent the best and most important scholarship on their particular topic. An understanding of the present through the lens of the past The field of modern Japan studies has grown steadily as Westerners have recognized the importance of Japan as a lading world economic force and an emerging regional power. The post-1945 economic success of ...
Argues that in a world of dwindling resources, economic inequality, and unremitting violence, the belief in endless progress can no longer be sustained. Asserts that we have arrived at a great historic divide, in which the old modern order is giving way to an age of "mutualism". Draws on world history and the study of international relations to explore the emerging future, in which new forms of social and political identity and regional associations and alignments will be needed to solve global problems. Argues that mutualism will require a dramatical change in the way states, international institutions, corporations, and local communities interact, and that this transformation will be especially difficult for the United States, which will have to abandon its exceptionalist identity and rejoin a world it can no longer escape.