Product Description
Wrapping Culture examines problems of intercultural communication and the possibilities for misinterpretation of the familiar in an unfamiliar context. Starting with an examination of Japanese gift-wrapping, Joy Hendry demonstrates how our expectations are often influenced by cultural factors which may blind us to an appreciation of underlying intent. She extends this approach to the study of polite language as the wrapping of thoughts and intentions, garments as body wrappings, constructions and gardens as wrapping of space. Hendry shows how this extends even to the ways in which people may be wrapped in seating arrangements, or meetings and drinking customs may be constrained by temporal versions of wrapping. Throughout the book, Hendry considers ways in which groups of people use such symbolic forms to impress and manipulate one another, and points out a Western tendency to underestimate such nonverbal communication, or reject it as mere decoration. She presents ideas that should be valid in any intercultural encounter and demonstrates that Japanese culture, so often thought of as a special case, can supply a model through which we can formulate general theories about human behaviour. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Japanology Classic
This is an excellent book about Japan - one of the best books of Japanology, up their with Benedict's Chrysanthemum, Doi's Amae/Dependence, and Nakane's Verticle Soceity and other sleeper, Nakashima Yoshimichi's "Urusai Nihonjin no Watash".

This book reads a little like a series of lectures, upon which I guess it was based going for breadth, and a considerable degree of repetition. I would have liked to read more about "why" (but then see below). And the style is couched in antrhopologist speak (e.g. calling her friends and aquaintances in Japan "informants," ho ho) but then scholars have to tow the jargon if they are to be accepted as scholars.

I would recommend this book to anyone as a fun and informative back door to understanding Japanese society, and as food for further thought.

If I might be allowed to highlight one point, that I wish Hendry had addressed further... She cricises Barthes' (and Maruyama Masao's?) "empty center" theory with reference to the imperial palace, saying (in a moment of enlightenment, about herself too on p109) "In fact, contrary to Barthe's expectation, I think that the place does irradiate power of a certain sort, and the problem may lie in our Western propensity to want always to be unwrapping, deconstructing, seeing the objects at the center of things." Here I think that Hendry really hits the nail on the head, but in so doing she challenges the notion of Japan being a "Wrapping" culture. Japan is a "wrapping culture" so long as you are a Westerner that expects there to be something inside. To the Japanese wrapping is not wrapping, but the real deal. The problem is that we attempt to find something inside. Perhaps the same criticism could be leveled at this review.
... Read more

Product Description
Edo is the ancient name for the city of Tokyo and covers the historic period from 1603 until 1868 when Japan was ruled by the shoguns. This military class transformed Edo from a fishing village into one of the largest, most populous and most cultivated cities in the world. This magnificently illustrated publication features a wide variety of Edo art, notably paintings, prints, ceramics, lacquerwares, metalwares, textiles, religious art and samurai paraphernalia. These works, and especially the prints known as ukiyo-e, reveal the life and customs of the Edo period, offering unrivaled material for the study of daily life across the breadth of Edo period Japan. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting overview of Edo period
Another excellent book by Barry Till and the Gallery of Greater Victoria. A good overview of the period. Good text, limited selection of objects. A good addition to any Japanese Arts library. ... Read more

Product Description
from the Preface: THE stories in this volume are transcribed from voluminous illustrateddiaries which have been kept by me for some twenty years spent in travel and insport in many lands-the last nine of them almost entirely in Japan, whilecollecting subjects of natural history for the British Museum; trawling anddredging in the Inland Sea, sometimes with success, sometimes without, but inthe end contributing to the treasury some fifty things new to Science, and,according to Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, 'adding greatly to the knowledge ofJapanese Ethnology.' As may be supposed, such a life has brought me into closecontact with the people-the fisher, the farmer, the priest, the doctor, thechildren, and all others from whom there is a possibility of extractinginformation. Many and weird are the tales I have been told. In this volume thePublishers prefer to have a mixture-stories of Mountains, of Trees, of Flowers,of Places in History, and Legends. For the general results obtained in mydiaries I have to thank our late Minister in Tokio, Sir Ernest Satow; theMinisters and Vice-Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Agriculture, who gave memany letters of introduction; my dear friend Mr. Hattori, Governor of HiogoPrefecture; the translators of the original notes and manuscripts (often roughlywritten in Japanese), among whom are Mr. Ando, Mr. Matsuzaki, and Mr. Watanabe;and Mr. Mo-No-Yuki, who drew and painted the illustrations from sketches of myown, which must often have grated on his artistic ideas, keeping him awake inreflection on the crudeness of the European sense of art.

Product Description
In the past few years, there has been a growing appreciation by Western scholars of the vast scale, great achievements, and methodological originality of Japanese archaeologists. However, an understanding of the results of their work has been hampered in the West by a lack of up-to-date and authoritative texts in English. This book provides Western readers for the first time with a uniquely East Asian perspective of Japanese archaeology.

Prehistoric Japan is organized into 16 chapters covering the environment, the history of the Japanese investigations of their past, the peculiarities of Japanese scholars' interests and methodologies, the organization and material culture of previous Japanese societies, economic trade and the question of immigration, the political unification of Japan, and the relationships between the core islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu to Hokkaido in the north and the Ryukyu Islands to the south. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A great starting point to discover Prehistoric Japan
I really wanted to get started on japanese history, and decided to read as much as possible, beginning with the prehistoric times. Beside the "Cambridge History of Japan" which is an absolute must, I had been told that, in regard to that period, Keiji Imamura's "Prehistoric Japan" was the one book in English to start with. And they were completely right.

Imamura offers a book that is written in a way that makes it understable to people who have no previous knowledge of the subject and/or archeology (unlike many books on prehistory/ancient history I've come across). No long, dry and fastidious presentation of sites: the goal here is to present the reader with an image as complete as possible, given what had been found at the time of publication (1996), of Japan between 12,000 BC and 300 AD (the Jmon and Yayoi cultures), and a glimpse at the subsequent Kofun and the political unification, as well as the situation in the Okinawa and Hokkaido islands, the extreme south and north respectively of today's Japan. He succeeds in keeping it short and straight to the point.

Also, what I appreciate is that the author doesn't hesitate to address questions that have found so far no definitive answer, and present the different plausible theories, or himself comes up with one, giving ample explanations and many exemples to support it, and compares it with those presented by other archeologists. Although I still have some doubt on some, it at least gives plenty to think about, and given the fact that there's probably much that must be discovered related to those times when no indigenous written records exist, I am pretty sure the outlines of our image will only sharpen when not get modified, and Imamura knows when to leave the door open to those futures changes.

Finally, I would like to address the issue underlined by the previous review: while I agree that some Japanese historians lack an objective perspective regarding some essential issues of their history, it is not the case here, at least not regarding Korea. While I don't know a word of Korean and can't judge the language issue, Imamura repetively underlines that the immigrants come, indeed, from Korea. In fact, he spends several chapters on it, and even refutes the theory that agriculture technics and metalurgy may have arrived directly from China. Never does he mention any other immigrant settlers than Koreans. It sounds clear enough to me.

All in all, a very convincing reading, and a great starting point to discover the ancient people of Japan.

Edit (02.27.07): I would like to point out that this book still mentions the possibility of Paleolithic settlements as old as 600,000 BC in Japan in Chapters 2 and 3. However, we know since late 2000 that the archeological elements that had been "discovered" and therefore led to this belief were the result of a huge hoax by archeologist Fujimura Shinichi; that means that so far, we have little to no evidence of any settlement in Japan prior 35,000 BC circa. The book having been published a few years before (1996) the imposture was revealed, it is not surprising that it still takes in account the possibility of Early and Middle Paleolithic settlements in Japan. But that isn't the author's main focus and therefore doesn't detracts much from the value of this book

I disagreed on some parts, but overall a good primer on Japanese Prehistory
There were a few things which disappointed me regarding the author's position as an expert on some areas.
First of all, the author tries to disconnect any relation linguistically from Korean and Japanese by saying that these two languages are just too different in grammar and vocabulary. As a linguist who has specialized in Asian languages, I can tell you that the vocabulary may be different, however, anybody who has studied these two languages will tell you that they are very similar in both grammar and structure, and even semantics (ie-the use and perception of "blue" vs. "green").

Also, in many places in the book, the author will refer to immigration during the Yayoi period as coming from "the continent" instead of specifically referring to "Korea", where most experts will agree is the point of origin for most of the immigration during this period. Although the author does infer many techniques and tools were from Korea, I did feel this point was avoided in many places where it should have been addressed.More and more research is supporting the idea of prehistoric Japanese coming from northeast Asia (ie- Ann Kumar's new book c: 2009).

But I will say that the author does make some good connections and expand on some of the relations between Japan and ancient China and Korea. I will give him credit for referring to one of the southern ancient Korean kingdoms of Kaya as "Kaya" rather than pressing on the controversial "Mimana".
A relatively fair academic book (although brief and not long-winded), in my opinion. ... Read more

Product Description
Samurai. Mongol invasions of Japan, Nanban trade, Bakumatsu, Shud?, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Edo period, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Katana, Japanese sword mountings, Samurai cinema, List of Japanese battles, List of samurai, Ninja, Kendo, Japanese clans. ... Read more