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Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies is a unique collection of essays derived from a series of dialogues held in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Los Angeles on the issues of racializations, gender, communities, and the positionalities of scholars involved in Japanese American studies. The book brings together some of the most renowned scholars of the discipline in Japan and North America. It seeks to overcome past constraints of dialogues between Japan- and U.S.-based scholars by providing opportunities for candid, extended conversations among its contributors. While each contribution focuses on the field of “Japanese American” studies, approaches to the subject vary—ranging from national and vil...
A unique interpretation of how wartime internment and the movement for redress affected Japanese Americans.
Though there is no biological validity to race, it continues to play a central role in various aspects of our daily lives. What, then, generates and reinforces the reality of race, and in what ways? In order to explore these questions, this book examines racial representations from both scientific and humanistic perspectives, taking into account both historical and contemporary views. This incisive anthology is the product of an interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars from Japan, Korea, Singapore, Germany, Israel, Iraq, and the US. The discussion consists of studies in history, literature, sociology, cultural anthropology, and genetics, while the primary focus is on racial representations in Asia. The book elucidates issues and phenomena that have been neglected or marginalized in the literature on racial representation, and it serves to broaden our understanding, both in the theoretical and empirical realms. Looking at these phenomena, it is realized that racism has become increasingly obscure and harder to identify and articulate, thus posing the question: Are we really beyond 'race' and heading towards a future of 'integration?'
In this book, Yuko Kawai departs from the common conception of Japan as an ethnically homogenous nation. A Transnational Critique of Japaneseness: Cultural Nationalism, Racism, and Multiculturalism in Japan investigates the construction of Japaneseness from a transnational perspective, examining ways to make Japanese nationhood more inclusive. Kawai analyzes a variety of communicational practices during the first two decades of the twenty-first century while situating Japaneseness in its longer historical transformation from the late nineteenth century. Kawai focuses on governmental and popular ideas of Japaneseness in light of local, global, historical, and contemporary contexts as well as in relation to a diverse array of Others in both Asia and the West.
Embodying Belonging is the first full-length study of a Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s ...
Framed by a century and a half of racialized Chinese American musical experiences, Claiming Diaspora explores the thriving contemporary musical culture of Asian/Chinese America. Ranging from traditional operas to modern instrumental music, from ethnic media networks to popular music, from Asian American jazz to the work of recent avant-garde composers, author Su Zheng reveals the rich and diverse musical activities among Chinese Americans and tells of the struggles of Chinese Americans to gain a foothold in the American cultural terrain. She not only tells their stories, but also examines the dynamics of the diasporic connections of this musical culture, revealing how Chinese American musical activities both reflect and contribute to local, national, and transnational cultural politics, and challenging us to take a fresh look at the increasingly plural and complex nature of American cultural identity.
Taking a sociological approach, this text provides a sophisticated, highly readable introduction to Japanese society.
With a land mass one and half times larger than the United Kingdom, a population of more than thirty million, and an economy that would rank sixth among world nations, the history of the state of California demands a closer look. The Human Tradition in California captures the region's rich history and diversity, taking readers into the daily lives of ordinary Californians at key moments in time. These brief biographies show how individual people and communities have influenced the broad social, cultural, political and economic forces that have shaped California history from the pre-mission period through the late-twentieth century. In personalizing California's history, this engaging new boo...
In this collection of seventeen essays, anthropologists, art historians, museum curators, writers, designers, and historians provide case studies exploring collaboration with community-oriented partners in order to document, interpret, and present their histories and experiences and provide a new understanding of what museums can and should be in the United States.
Japanese society in the 1990s and 2000s produced a range of complicated material about sexualized schoolgirls, and few topics have caught the imagination of western observers so powerfully. While young Japanese girls had previously been portrayed as demure and obedient, in training to become the obedient wife and prudent mother, in recent years less than demure young women have become central to urban mythology and the content of culture. The cultic fascination with the figure of a deviant school girl, which has some of its earliest roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, likewise re-emerged and proliferated in fascinating and timely ways in the 1990s and 2000s. Through explor...