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This volume brings together for the first time a significant body of Professor Barnes' scholarly writing on Japanese early state formation, brought together so that successive topics form a coherent overview of the problems and solutions of ancient Japan. The writings are, in some cases, the only studies of these topics available in English and they differ from the majority of other articles on the subject in being anthropological rather than cultural or historical in nature.
Japan's Contested War Memories is an important and significant book that explores the struggles within contemporary Japanese society to come to terms with Second World War history. Focusing particularly on 1972 onwards, the period starts with the normalization of relations with China and the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, and ends with the sixtieth anniversary commemorations. Analyzing the variety of ways in which the Japanese people narrate, contest and interpret the past, the book is also a major critique of the way the subject has been treated in much of the English-language. Philip Seaton concludes that war history in Japan today is more divisive and widely argued over than in any of the other major Second World War combatant nations. Providing a sharp contrast to the many orthodox statements about Japanese 'ignorance', amnesia' and 'denial' about the war, this is an engaging and illuminating study that will appeal to scholars and students of Japanese history, politics, cultural studies, society and memory theory.
The Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011, reminded us that we were just one species within the great cycle of life on earth, that we were allowed to survive only because of nature, and that the idea that we were somehow able to conquer nature was simply an illusion. Now more than ever it is time that we confront head-on the change from the "underground resources" type of civilization to one with a new way of life and technology that embraces a sense of nature. To do so, we must learn from nature, the only sustainable society on earth, and create technology that embraces such a view of nature. We call such technology, which cleverly revives nature's greatness, Nature ...
Shunsuke Tsurumi, one of Japan’s most distinguished contemporary philosophers, continues his study of the intellectual and social history of modern Japan with this penetrating analysis of popular culture in the post-war years. Japanese manga (comics), manzai (dialogues), television, advertising and popular songs are the medium for a revealing examination of the many contradictory forces at work beneath the surface of an apparently uniform and universal culture. The author argues that the iconography of these popular forms has deep and significant implication for the development of Japanese national life in the post-growth years that lie ahead.
The book presents three Japanese psychotherapeutic approaches, Morita, Naikan, and Dohsa-hou, in the chronological order of their development, giving a thorough account of both their underlying concepts and practical applications. In addition to describing their idiosyncrasies, a major focus of the book is also to elucidate as to how the deeply imprinted cultural specificities of these approaches, emanating from their common cultural ground, converge to two focal points—silence and body-mind interconnectedness—that vest the approaches with their therapeutic power. In so doing, the book gives an insight into the intrinsic dynamics of the methods and emphasizes on their potential for universal applicability notwithstanding their indisputable cultural peculiarities. This self-contained and well-structured book fills the gap in the yet scarce English-language literature on Japanese psychotherapies.
This book examines Tokyo’s changes, current challenges, and future trends through a new kind of regional geography and serves as an important source of comprehensive information about the past, present, and future perspectives of Tokyo as a global city. Regional geography relies on two main approaches. The traditional one addresses each geographical element of a region individually and in depth, in a descriptive and static manner. The other focuses on a region’s specific phenomena and realities as a starting point and proceeds to identify the region’s constituent elements and their interactions, which it records and explains in a systematic and dynamic manner. The present volume, unlik...
This book demonstrates that during Japan’s early modern Edo period (1603–1868) an ethical code existed among the merchant class comparable to that of the well-known Bushido. There is compelling evidence that contemporary merchants, who were widely and openly despised as immoral by the samurai, in fact acted in highly ethical ways in accordance with a well-articulated moral code. Japanese society was strictly stratified into four distinct and formally recognized classes: warrior, farmer, craftsman and merchant. From the warriors’ perspective, the merchants, at the base of the social order, had no virtue, and existed only to skim profits as middlemen between producers and consumers. But ...
Incorporating Japanese language materials and field-based research, this compelling collection of essays takes a comparative look at the changing notions of gender and sexual diversity in Japan, considering both heterosexual and non-heterosexual histories, lifestyles and identities. Written by key Japanese authors and Western scholars the volume examines how non-conformist individuals have questioned received notions and challenged social norms relating to sex and gender. The chapters depict the plurality of gender positions; from housewives opposed to gender roles within marriage to heterosexual men wishing to be more involved in family life. Including material not previously published in English, this volume gives an overview of the important changes taking place in gender and sexuality studies within Japanese scholarship.
In this book, the functions and dynamics of enterprises are explained with the use of anthropological methods. The chapters are based on anthropological research that has continued mainly as an inter-university research project, which is named Keiei Jinruigaku, of the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan) since 1993. These studies have a twofold aim: to clarify that enterprises are not only actors in economic activity but also actors that create culture and civilization; and to find the raison d'être of enterprises in a global society. Business anthropology is an approach to the investigation of various phenomena in enterprises and management using anthropological methodology (e.g., particip...