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Since the end of the 1980s, scholarly work on Japan has attempted to escape the bounds of the previous discourse that continuously described it as ‘changing Japan’, a discourse which paradoxically also focused, in the main, on the hierarchical models of this so-called vertical society. While accepting the rapid rate of social change and enduring continuities within Japan, this new wave of work also looked at the micro-level by trying to place people within the framework of ‘the’ Japanese model.

The four volumes in this Routledge Major Work bring together the most useful new-wave essays written from the 1990s onwards, together with the several key and ‘classic’ articles written in earlier decades in order to build up a more nuanced portrait of modern Japanese culture and society.

The first part of Volume I looks at the macro level of politics and the economy. The second part moves from material focusing on the structure of society to the rise of civil society and the effect the recession in the 1990s has had on individuals.

The other three volumes have a similar two-part structure, with a key introductory article—or articles—to set the scene (in addition to the editor’s Introduction to the set as a whole). The focus moves from larger structures, to the life course of individuals in Volume II, through to key issues about Japanese culture in Volume III. Volume IV will address religion and the diversity of contemporary Japanese society.

This collection of essential journal articles and other extracts is an important research resource and will be welcomed by all scholars and students of modern Japan.

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Six contributors discuss the state of Japanese arts during the allied occupation after the second World War. Topics include missteps by occupation censors, caution and experimentation on the part of nine artists of the era, the preservation of cultural property, and the conflicted roles of women an ... Read more

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This book challenges the perception of Japan as a ‘copying culture’ through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case studies.

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After The Tale of Genji (c. 1000), the greatest work of classical Japanese literature is the historical narrative The Tale of the Heike (13th-14th centuries).In addition to opening up fresh perspectives on the Heike narratives, this study also draws attention to a range of problems centered on the interrelationship between narrative, ritual space, and Japan's changing views of China as they bear on depictions of the emperor's authority, warriors, and marginal population going all the way back to the Nara period.By situating the Heike in this long temporal framework, the author sheds light on a hidden history of royal authority that was entangled in Daoist and yin-yang ideas in the Nara period, practices centered on defilement in the Heian period, and Buddhist doctrines pertaining to original enlightenment in the medieval period, all of which resurface and combine in Heike's narrative world.In introducing for the first time the full range of Heike narrative to students and scholars of Japanese literature, the author argues that we must also reexamine our understanding of the literature, ritual, and culture of the Heian and Nara periods. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (5)

Big Bang, Little Boy, Art Explosion
Here's an email I sent to a friend about the Little Boy exhibition and this book:

I spent Friday afternoon at the Japan Society viewing the Little Boy exhibition, curated by Takashi Murakami - and I purchased the handsome exhibit catalogue, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture (edited by Murakami, with commentary and essays in English and Japanese).

The exhibition title, of course, is the name of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and that event is a recurrent theme and background for the exhibit. But it also points toward the apparent childlike drift of Japanese pop culture as evidenced by the kawaii craze. Murakami has two essays in the catalogue, the first of which is "Earth in my Window" (pp. 98-149). The essay has an image from "Howl's Moving Castle" as its frontispiece, opens by talking of the historic Little Boy, moves through the assertion that "everyone who lives in Japan knows-something is wrong" and quickly arrives at "Kawaii (cute) culture has become a living entity that pervades everything. With a population heedless of the cost of embracing immaturity, the nation is in the throes of a dilemma: a preoccupation with anti-aging may conquer not only the human heart, but also the body. It is a utopian society as fully regulated as the science-fiction world George Orwell envisioned in 1984: comfortable, happy, fashionable-a world nearly devoid of discriminatory impulses" (p. 100). I've not read the essay in full.

The exhibition was quite interesting, steeped in manga and anime. One wall was covered in original hand-drawn Doraemon panels, another wall of Hello Kitty art and merchandise, Mobile Suit Gundam was well represented, while a bench of foot-high Godzilla sculptures was placed in front of a black well on which the 9th article of the Japanese constitution was written, in English and Japanese.That's the article in which Japan renounces the right to wage war. And lots more, more than I can even mention, much less comment on, in this brief note.

The overall effect - of both the exhibition and the catalog - is that of manga and anime themselves.We have worlds colliding and intersecting, intermingling and cross-breeding.Who knows what it will toss up, hopeful monsters and all.

I was most taken by the (acrylic) paintings of Aya Takano. Midori Matsui remarks of her art (p. 232):

"The interpenetration of the future and the past, the outer and inner space is captured dreamily in Takano's paintings, in habited by supple, nude teenagers and half-human creatures drawn with tentative lines and painted in a vapory spread of acrylic. Her retro-futuristic vision is inspired by the science-fiction novels of Brian B. Aldis, Cordweiner Smith, James Tiptree, Jr. and the comics of Osamu Tezuka, the father of postwar Japanese narrative manga. The mixture of hippie hallucination and space-age fantasy gives Takano's erotic nudes a mythical flavor. Coyly taunting the "Lolita complex" of an otaku erotic comic, she conveys a different sort of eroticism derived from the androgyny of the adolescent body."

Yes.Her work is very delicate, but substantial.Moderately painterly as well.You can see the brush strokes, but the paint is thin and Matsui's phrase "vapory spread" is apt. The heads are rounded, as are the large eyes. The eyes are also heavily lined, as though these wiry and delicate creatures are made up with kohl around their eyes. The images are haunting.

If I were a collector, I would collect Takano. But I would have to hang those paintings in a gallery.I wouldn't want them in a living room, a library, a hallway, nor a bedroom.The images are too intrusive to be background.They demand your attention; they are jealous.

I saw lots of images like that in this exhibition. I wish I could see it again.

Little Boy: a book of exceptional beauty and social importance
"Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" is far and away the most beautifully-designed and edgiest book ever issued by the Japan Society in New York.At the same time, it is the most significant.That the bilingual "Little Boy" catalogue is so stunningly beautiful and up-to-the minute reflects the fact that it was edited and produced in Japan by the graphics artists driving the trends it documents.The art it examines is, as Alexandra Monroe of the Japan Society puts it, a superflat "cartoon imagery of exploding mushroom clouds, fantastic mutant monsters, and baby-faced cyborg heroines."This art bears some resemblance to that of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, but even the art of these two icons cannot begin to hint at the revolution in graphic design that has occurred in Japan.Nor can their art prepare us for the revolution of meaning that this graphic art has assumed for the Japanese of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

And it is this last point that brings us to the seminal importance of "Little Boy" as both a book and exhibition.
To return to Munroe's essay, with which readers may prefer to begin the book, in countries other than Japan animated films, cartoon-like graphics, and comic books are typically associated with children alone.In Japan, in contrast, these art forms have been appropriated by adults as well as the art mainstream.Of greatest importance, they have become a major means by which the Japanese are attempting to deal with the dual traumas of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the postwar dependency that a US-written constitution imposed on Japan as a player on the world stage.If such traumas were being reflected in the graphic arts alone, this phenomenon would be perhaps no more than an interesting oddity.Nearly everyday, however, attempts to grapple with the same issues are being played out on the political stage, be it in the context of a prime ministerial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine for the war dead or Japan's agonizing over how to respond to the apparent nuclearization of the Korean peninsula.It is tempting to ascribe these political developments to a renascent right-wing fringe."Little Boy" is, however, a wake-up call telling us that the population as a whole is wrestling with issues of how their nation should be defined.

Great
I attended the show in New york and wished to have a catalog. They were all sold out but reccomended that I go to amazon. I was quite pleased. Very visual and informative. Be for warned not a product for children. It is true to form of Japense culutre in animation and graphics. If you have a chance I highly reccomend you go to the exhibit.

The Sociological Aspects of Commercial Imagery...
Murakami's latest curatorial effort has gained nearly universal acclaim amongst the art world.His "Little Boy" exhibition attempts to understand the origins of contemporary Japanese art's affinity for both the horrifically violent and the frightfully cute (kawaii).Ultimately, Murakami argues that these images are spawned from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined with postwar US domination.Violent imagery becomes a sign for a fascination with the kind of power that postwar Japan lacked.Kawaii imagery is then seen as stemming from Japan's status as a protectorate of the US.This relationship was not unlike that of a parent and child (the child/adolecent becomes a prevalent theme in Japanese art from postwar era forward.)
This effort is faithfully documented in this beautiful catalogue which includes works by contemporary Japanese artists, artists of Murakami's Kaikai Kiki, and popular anime and manga such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Doraemon.A must for anyone interested in the origin of Japan's unique hyper-contemporary aesthetic.

Last gasp for Murakami
Murakostabi (Murakami + Mark Kostabi) This grating exhibition and premise mines the discards of Japanese art history (Okamoto) and gloms on to the earlier actual historical greats. At the hilarious symposium Murakami was reduced to being called Little boy himself! it was hilarious to watch and hear. Finally he is moving out and away from the artworld like Peter Max and yesterday's news. The exhibition is calculating (the use of mushrooms- halucinogens- and Mushroom clouds, Article 9 - predictable) The big black mushroom cloud painting was really conceived by one of his under-paid assistants Mariko Suzuki and he tries to take credit. It is a cloying show with very little merit. Seeing Superflat in Tokyo and being suspicious of it then this new incarnation of it reeks of the same stunts that troubled sitcoms use. It is begging for substance. The works of Makoto Aida or Tenmyouya hisashi or even the toys and magazines by dehara have much more substance. Think I am pissed? well search these out and you might be surprised at the rich depth of REAL JAPANESE ART, not thie silly misinformation of murakostabi. ... Read more

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Japanese popular culture has been steadily increasing in visibility both in Asia and beyond in recent years. This book examines Japanese popular music, exploring its historical development, technology, business and production aspects, audiences, and language and culture.

Based both on extensive textual and aural analysis, and on anthropological fieldwork, it provides a wealth of detail, finding differences as well as similarities between the Japanese and Western pop music scenes. Carolyn Stevens shows how Japanese popular music has responded over time to Japan's relationship to the West in the post-war era, gradually growing in independence from the political and cultural hegemonic presence of America. Similarly, the volume explores the ways in which the Japanese artist has grown in independence vis-à-vis his/her role in the production process, and examines in detail the increasingly important role of the jimusho, or the entertainment management agency, where many individual artists and music industry professionals make decisions about how the product is delivered to the public. It also discusses the connections to Japanese television, film, print and internet, thereby providing through pop music a key to understanding much of Japanese popular culture more widely.

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Ever since Commodore Perry sailed into Uraga Channel, relations between the United States and Japan have been characterized by culture shock. Now a distinguished Japanese historian critically analyzes contemporary thought, public opinion, and behavior in the two countries over the course of the twentieth century, offering a binational perspective on culture shock as it has affected their relations. In these essays, Sadao Asada examines the historical interaction between these two countries from 1890 to 2006, focusing on naval strategy, transpacific racism, and the atomic bomb controversy. For each topic, he offers a rigorous analysis of both American and Japanese perceptions, showing how cultural relations and the interchange of ideas have been complex and occasionally destructive. ... Read more

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Interesting book
Asada is a Japanese scholar who received his college eduction in the US shortly after WWII. He reports that he was "Americanized;" however, he eventually returned to Japan to a university position where he remains today. The content of the book is somewhat limited compared to what its title might be taken to imply. Nevertheless, there is considerable, and interesting, discussion to the mind-set, both Japanese and American, that led the two countries into the conflict of WWII. Well worth reading by somebody interested in this subject matter.
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What is the connection between the United States' imbalance of trade with Japan and the imbalance of translation in the other direction? Between Western literary critics' estimates of Japanese fiction and Japanese politicians' "America-bashing"? Between the portrayal of East-West relations in the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and the terms of the GATT trade agreements?

In this provocative study, Masao Miyoshi deliberately adopts an off-center perspective--one that restores the historical asymmetry of encounters between Japan and the United States, from Commodore Perry to Douglas MacArthur--to investigate the blindness that has characterized relations between the two cultures.

Both nations are blinkered by complementary forms of ethnocentricity. The United States--or, more broadly, the Eurocentric West--believes its culture to be universal, while Japan believes its culture to be essentially unique. Thus American critics read and judge Japanese literature by the standards of the Western novel; Japanese politicians pay lip service to "free trade" while supporting protectionist policies at home and abroad.

Miyoshi takes off from literature to range across culture, politics, and economics in his analysis of the Japanese and their reflections in the West; the fiction of Tanizaki, Mishima, Oe; trade negotiations; Japan bashing and America bashing; Emperor worship; Japanese feminist writing; the domination of transcribed conversation as a literary form in contemporary Japan. In his confrontation with cultural critics, Miyoshi does not spare "centrists" of either persuasion, nor those who refuse to recognize that "the literary and the economical, the cultural and the industrial, are inseparable."

Yet contentious as this book can be, it ultimately holds out, by its example, hope for a criticism that can see beyond the boundaries of national cultures--without substituting a historically false "universal" culture--and that examines cultural convergences from a viewpoint that remains provocatively and fruitfully off center.

Customer Reviews (1)

good book
honestly I have only read parts of the book, but of those that I've read, I think Miyoshi does a great job discussing notions of power withing Japan, and various phases of contact between Japan and the 'west'.There is a great chapter on Junichiro Tanizaki entitled: "the Lure of the West."and another chapter on Japanese women and women writers discusses how women pose a threat to the traditional patriarchy in Japan.Overall a really good book about Japanese contact with 'others'.i plan on reading the entire book after finals. ... Read more

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Reasonable Men, Powerful Words traces the development of political culture in twentieth-century Japan through a social and intellectual biography of six Japanese economists who influenced national political life in significant ways. The global ascendance of social scientists is one of the defining characteristics of modernity. They dedicated themselves to an extraordinary range of public policies, including eliminating poverty, reducing disparities of wealth, reshaping the relationship between government and citizen, building a strong economy devoid of a military component, and creating an educated and politically active populace in Japan.Illustrations: 20 b/w photographs ... Read more

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This is the first full-length study in English of Japan's folk performing arts covering such topics as the different categories of presentations, public policies affecting the folk performing arts, performance events within and without communities, and the folk performing arts in literature. Throughout, it addresses issues concerning the survival and preservation of traditional culture in contemporary Japan.

Once largely unknown outside of their local community settings, Japan's folk performing arts have today captured universal attention. In Japan, almost every municipality is home to one or more of the diverse dramatic, dance, narrative, and musical presentations that make up the folk performing arts. They can be seen at events that range from long-established festivals to newly created folk-culture and tourist programs.

Since the 1920s, a growing body of work by folklorists, theater historians, and other academic specialists, together with literary treatment by well-known authors, brought the folk performing arts into the national cultural spotlight. The postwar Cultural Properties Protection Law conferred on them the status of legally designated cultural assets. ... Read more

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When this book was originally published it was the first work of its kind to examine the way in which language is used to express the ‘myth’ of advertising slogans and other popular cultural forms. By making use of general theories from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, media studies and semiotics, the book attempts to demystify Japanese culture as it has been hitherto presented in the West, and shows how such cultural forms as ‘noodle westerns’ and high-school baseball uphold the well-known ideologies of ‘selflessness’, ‘diligence’, ‘compliance’ and ‘co-operation’ typically associated with the Japanese. Ultimately, the book poses the question: are those whom we call the Japanese ‘real’ people in their own right, or merely a nation acting out a part written for them by Western civilisation?

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When youthink of Japan, bamboo springs to mind. This exotic plant was Hans Aprry's ruling passion. A resident of Yokohama from 1890 until 1896, the Zurich silk merchant lavished time and resources on amassing an incomparable collection of objects made of, or referring to, bamboo.As well as a wide variety of objects made from bamboo, the collection, which comprises about 1500 items, includes representations of bamboo on textiles, picture scrolls and in books, on ceramics, as decoration, sword accessories and utensils in daily use. Given to the Zurich Ethnography Museum, the Sprry Collection was - despite the superlative quality of the pieces - last on display a century ago!Martin Brauen has achieved a scholarly rescue of this treasure from neglect. The most important and finest pieces are brilliantly reproduced, with modern photographs supplemented by Japanese photos dating from about 1890 and period drawings illustrated the uses to which these bamboo objects were put and how they were made. ... Read more

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"[This book] is an attempt to trace the developmental process of this culture in terms of origin and historical periods and to define more closely what is frequently referred to as the 'uniqueness' of Japan's cultural heritage." [Excerpt taken from the Foreword.] ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent book for kids
I have one of the first copies of this book. It is excellent for kids and will keep them interested in Japan and its culture. It can be hard to find, which is very unfortunate, but there are a few copies out there. ... Read more

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China is a vast country that covers a fifth of the Asian continent. It encompasses over 55 different ethnic groups and is one of the world's oldest living cultures. China chose to isolate itself from the rest of the world for thousands of years, and, until the 1700s, many images of China were still based on descriptions given by the explorer Marco Polo centuries earlier: China was an exotic land, full of mystery and excitement. Japan adopted and adapted many Chinese ideas - about writing philosophy, ways of governing, and ideals of beauty in clothing and ornamentation. Rooted in thousands of years of history, both nations have rich traditions reflected in the styling and beauty of their costumes. From the secret of Chinese silk, to the techniques of Japan's master swordmakers, "China and Japan" takes the reader through almost 10,000 years of costume history. Find out: what dragons and wild beasts had to do with fashion in China's imperial court; why Chinese women bound their feet; and, how samurai warriors prepared for battle. ... Read more

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The period of Japanese history before the advent of industrialisation and modernism is of tremendous interest. The essays in this collection show a fascination with the social context behind the development of aesthetics, drama, language, art and philosophy, whether it be the world of the pleasure quarters or the Shogun's court. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a book like this comes once in a blue moon...
This book was a real treat to read. After reading it, I have come to understand and respect the beauty in Japan's history. I would recomend thisbook to anyone that has a passion for history or Japan. ... Read more