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This collection of 14 essays explores drama from around the world that depicts the United States and Americans. From eighteenth century German dramas about Native Americans through post-Revolutionary War British plays, to the theaters of contemporary Japan, Mexico, Serbia, Ireland, Ghana and other nations, the contributors consider conflicting representations of Americans. Often critical, sometimes flattering, and occasionally insulting, these various international views highlight perceptions of America abroad and how they influence the world's stages.
This book argues for a new articulation of the ways in which transgression is theorized in contemporary literature by Japanese women. Exploring the rhetorical and discursive mechanics of literary “bad girls” from fiction produced during the millennial turn (1990–2010), the book contends that women writers today deploy truant, unruly, restless, and aggressive female protagonists not to challenge the status quo but rather to reaffirm it. While Japanese women’s fiction has long been invested in cultivating an uncomfortable politics of opposition through “unladylike” themes such as sex, sexuality, and violence, the book argues that today authors turn to such acts of defiance to quiet...
This book examines the transnational phenomenon of Japonisme in the exoticist and “autoexoticist” literature of the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the way in which reciprocal processes of transcultural acquisition – by Japan and from Japan – were portrayed in the medium of literature, the book illustrates how literary Japonisme and the wider processes whereby Japan, with its alien exotic culture and unique refined aestheticism, was absorbing Western civilization in its own way in the late nineteenth century at the same time as the phenomenon of Japonisme was occurring in Western fine arts, which were inspired by traditional Japanese artistic practices. Specifically, the book focuses on the literary works of Lafcadio Hearn and Pierre Loti, who travelled from France and America, respectively, to Japan, and Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, who in turn went, respectively, to Germany and England from Japan. Exploring the eclectic hybridity of Japan’s modernization during the late nineteenth century, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Comparative Literature.
A Companion to Japanese History provides an authoritative overview of current debates and approaches within the study of Japan’s history. Composed of 30 chapters written by an international group of scholars Combines traditional perspectives with the most recent scholarly concerns Supplements a chronological survey with targeted thematic analyses Presents stimulating interventions into individual controversies
Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China is the richest exploration to date of late imperial Chinese literati interest in male love. Employing primary sources such as miscellanies, poetry, fiction and 'flower guides', Wu Cuncun argues that male homoeroticism played a central role in the cultural life of late imperial Chinese literati elites. Countering recent arguments that homosexuality was marginal and disparaged during this period, the book also seeks to trace the relationship of homoeroticism to status and power. In addition to historical portraits and analysis, the book also advances the concept of 'sensibilities' as a method for interpreting the complex range of homoerotic texts produced in late imperial China.
This book uses the figure of the salaryman to explore masculinity in Japan by examining the salaryman as a gendered construct, and is one of the first to focus on the men within Japanese corporate culture through a gendered lens. Not only does this add to the emerging literature on masculinity in Japan, but given the important role Japanese corporate culture has played in Japan's emergence as an industrial power, Romit Dasgupta's research offers a new way of looking both at Japanese business culture, and more generally at important changes in Japanese society in recent years.
Preserved buildings and historic districts, museums and reconstructions have become an important part of the landscape of cities around the world. Beginning in the 1970s, Tokyo participated in this trend. However, repeated destruction and rapid redevelopment left the city with little building stock of recognized historical value. Late twentieth-century Tokyo thus presents an illuminating case of the emergence of a new sense of history in the cityÕs physical environment, since it required both a shift in perceptions of value and a search for history in the margins and interstices of a rapidly modernizing cityscape. Scholarship to date has tended to view historicism in the postindustrial cont...
With rapid economic progress and increasing life expectancy in East Asian societies, more attention is being paid by their governments, the media and the academy to mental illness and dementia. While clinical research on mental illness and dementia in Chinese societies acknowledges the importance of culture in shaping people’s experiences of these illnesses, how Chinese culture shapes people’s understandings of and responses to mental illness and dementia has yet to be interrogated to any depth. Mental Illness, Dementia and Family in China breaks new ground in exploring how Chinese culture, namely, the understandings, norms, values and scripts that people acquire through being members of...
Using the Euro-American theoretical framework of postmodernism, feminism and post-colonialism, this book analyses the fictional and critical work of four contemporary Japanese writers; Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin. In addition the author reconsiders this Euro-American theory by looking back on it from the perspective of Japanese literary work. Presenting outstanding analysis of Japanese intellectuals and writers who have received little attention in the West, the book also includes an extensive and comprehensive bibliography making it essential reading for those studying Japanese literature, Japanese studies and Japanese thinkers.
In Re-Politicising the Kyoto School as Philosophy Christopher Goto-Jones contends that existing approaches to the controversial Kyoto School fail to take it seriously as a school of philosophy, instead focussing on historical debates about the alleged complicity of the School’s members with the imperialist regime in Japan. The essays in this book take a new approach to the subject, engaging substantially with the philosophical texts of members of the Kyoto School, and demonstrating that the school developed serious and sophisticated positions on many of the perennial questions that lie at the heart of political philosophy. These positions are innovative and fresh, and are of value to polit...