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From raw steel to tempered blade, this text presents a visual account of thencient craft of swordmaking as practiced in modern Japan.
In The Art of the Japanese Sword, master swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshihara offers a detailed look at the entire process of Japanese sword making, including the finishing and appreciation of Japanese blades. Japanese sword art stands out in many ways: functionality as a weapon, sophisticated metallurgy and metal smithing, the shape of the blade itself—all contribute to the beauty of these remarkable weapons. The Art of the Japanese Sword conveys to the reader Japanese samurai sword history and Japanese sword care, as well as explaining how to view and appreciate a blade. With 256 full-color pages, this sword book illustrates in meticulous detail how modern craftsmen use traditional methods to prepare their steel, forge the sword and create the unique hardened edge. By gaining a good understanding of how a sword is actually made, the reader will be able to appreciate the samurai sword more fully. Topics include: Appreciating the Japanese sword History of the Japanese sword Traditional Japanese steel making Making the sword Finishing the sword
As exemplified by Madame Butterfly, East-West relations have often been expressed as the relations between the masculine, dominant West and the feminine, submissive East. Yet, this binary model does not account for the important role of white women in the construction of Orientalism. Mari Yoshihara's study examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and shows how, through their engagement with Asia, these women found new forms of expression, power, and freedom that were often denied to them in other realms of their lives in America. She demonstrates how white women's attraction to Asia shaped and was shaped by ...
A comprehensive overview of the major events in the history of the contemporary Japanese sword and the work of many of the best smiths active today.
This book by a leading expert considers the growth of an inefficient superlayer in Southeast Asian economies and assesses the problems that this poses for future economic development. Yoshihara argues that as technological backwardness, the low quality of government intervention, and discrimination against those of Chinese descent have prevented capitalism from stimulating development, there has emerged a brand of ersatz capitalism very different from the capitalism in Japan and the West. He goes on to offer recommendations for creating a dynamic capitalism while acknowledging that obstacles to their implementation exist in current Southeast Asian social and political systems.
Much has been written about Leonard Bernstein, a musician of extraordinary talent who was legendary for his passionate love of life and many relationships. In this work, Mari Yoshihara reveals the deeply emotional connections Bernstein formed with two little-known Japanese individuals, which she narrates through their personal letters that have never been seen before. Dearest Lenny interweaves an intimate story of love and art with a history of Bernstein's transformation from an American icon to a world maestro during the second half of the twentieth century. The articulate, moving letters of Kazuko Amano--a woman who began writing fan letters to Bernstein in 1947 and became a close family f...
In Unpredictable Agents, twelve Japanese scholars of American studies tell their stories of how they encountered “America” and came to dedicate their careers to studying it. People in postwar Japan have experienced “America” in a number of ways—through literature, material goods, popular culture, foodways, GIs, missionaries, art, political figures, celebrities, and business. As the Japanese public wrestled with a complex mixture of admiration and confusion, yearning and repulsion, closeness and alienation toward the US, Japanese scholars specializing in American studies have become interlocutors in helping their compatriots understand the country. In scholarly literature, these int...
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