Consuming Japan

Consuming Japan PDF Author: Andrew C. McKevitt
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This insightful book explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese. Would Japan's remarkable post–World War II economic success enable the East Asian nation to overtake the United States? Or could Japan's globe-trotting corporations serve as a model for battered U.S. industries, pointing the way to a future of globalized commerce and culture? While popular films and literature recycled old anti-Asian imagery and crafted new ways of imagining the "yellow peril," and formal U.S.-Japan relations remained locked in a holding pattern of Cold War complacency, a remarkable shift was happening in countless local places throughout the United States: Japanese goods were remaking American consumer life and injecting contemporary globalization into U.S. commerce and culture. What impact did the flood of billions of Japanese things have on the ways Americans produced, consumed, and thought about their place in the world? From autoworkers to anime fans, Consuming Japan introduces new unorthodox actors into foreign-relations history, demonstrating how the flow of all things Japanese contributed to the globalizing of America in the late twentieth century.

Consuming Japan

Consuming Japan PDF Author: Andrew C. McKevitt
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469634481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
This insightful book explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese. Would Japan's remarkable post–World War II economic success enable the East Asian nation to overtake the United States? Or could Japan's globe-trotting corporations serve as a model for battered U.S. industries, pointing the way to a future of globalized commerce and culture? While popular films and literature recycled old anti-Asian imagery and crafted new ways of imagining the "yellow peril," and formal U.S.-Japan relations remained locked in a holding pattern of Cold War complacency, a remarkable shift was happening in countless local places throughout the United States: Japanese goods were remaking American consumer life and injecting contemporary globalization into U.S. commerce and culture. What impact did the flood of billions of Japanese things have on the ways Americans produced, consumed, and thought about their place in the world? From autoworkers to anime fans, Consuming Japan introduces new unorthodox actors into foreign-relations history, demonstrating how the flow of all things Japanese contributed to the globalizing of America in the late twentieth century.

Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan

Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan PDF Author: Katarzyna J. Cwiertka
Publisher: Consumption and Sustainability in Asia
ISBN: 9789462980631
Category : Consumer behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s shook the very foundation of the post-war economic 'miracle' and marked the beginning of a gradual shift in the environmental consciousness of the Japanese. Yet, it by no means removed consumption from the pivotal position it occupied within Japanese society. Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan argues that consumption in Japan today is no longer simply a component of everyday economic activities, but rather a reflection of a society guided by the 'logic of late capitalism'. The volume pins down the contradictory nature of the setting in which consuming occurs in Japan today: the veneration of material comfort and convenience on the one hand, and the new rhetoric of recycling and energy conservation on the other. Theoretical insights developed as part of an art-historical enquiry, such as notions of socially engaged art and its critique, offer a new paradigm for investigating this dilemma. By combining case studies analysing the production and consumption of contemporary art with ethnographic material related to ordinary commodities and shopping, this volume provides a novel, transdisciplinary approach to exploring how a 'society of consumers' operates in post-bubble Japan and how contemporary life is a 'consuming project'.

Waste

Waste PDF Author: Eiko Maruko Siniawer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501725858
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "Waste".

How to Reach Japan by Subway

How to Reach Japan by Subway PDF Author: Meghan Warner Mettler
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 149620686X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Japan's official surrender to the United States in 1945 brought to an end one of the most bitter and brutal military conflicts of the twentieth century. U.S. government officials then faced the task of transforming Japan from enemy to ally, not only in top-level diplomatic relations but also in the minds of the American public. Only ten years after World War II, this transformation became a success as middle-class American consumers across the country were embracing Japanese architecture, films, hobbies, philosophy, and religion. Cultural institutions on both sides of the Pacific along with American tastemakers promoted a new image of Japan in keeping with State Department goals. Focusing on traditions instead of modern realities, Americans came to view Japan as a nation that was sophisticated and beautiful yet locked harmlessly in a timeless "Oriental" past. What ultimately led many Americans to embrace Japanese culture was a desire to appear affluent and properly "tasteful" in the status-conscious suburbs of the 1950s. In How to Reach Japan by Subway, Meghan Warner Mettler studies the shibui phenomenon, in which middle-class American consumers embraced Japanese culture while still exoticizing this new aesthetic. By examining shibui through the popularity of samurai movies, ikebana flower arrangement, bonsai cultivation, home and garden design, and Zen Buddhism, Mettler provides a new context and perspective for understanding how Americans encountered a foreign nation in their everyday lives.

Consuming Bodies

Consuming Bodies PDF Author: Fran Lloyd
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781861891471
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Fran Lloyd focuses on the resurgence in the imaging of sex and consumerism in contemporary Japanese art and the connections they establish with the wider historical, social and political conditions within Japanese culture.

Gender Gymnastics

Gender Gymnastics PDF Author: Leonie R. Stickland
Publisher: ISBS
ISBN: 9781876843519
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
"The artifice of gender performance - sometimes playful, mostly conscientious - has for ninety-four years enthralled and entertained fans of the Takarazuka Revue, Japan's largest all-female musical theatre company. Adored by a predominantly female audience, its' dashing male-role players embody an 'ideal masculinity,' reflected and magnified by the overwrought femininity of their female-role counterparts." "Through analysis of the aspirations, endeavours and experiences of Takarazuka's creators, performers and fans, voiced by the author's years of participant observation, this volume elucidates a plethora of gender issues which have impacted upon the life-stages of women in Japan."--BOOK JACKET.

Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan

Femininity, Self-harm and Eating Disorders in Japan PDF Author: Gitte Marianne Hansen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317444396
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
From the 1980s onwards, the incidence of eating disorders and self-harm has increased among Japanese women, who report receiving mixed messages about how to be women. Mirroring this, women’s self-directed violence has increasingly been thematised in diverse Japanese narrative and visual culture. This book examines the relationship between normative femininity and women’s self-directed violence in contemporary Japanese culture. To theoretically define the complexities that constitute normativity, the book develops the concept of ‘contradictive femininity’ and shows how in Japanese culture, women’s paradoxical roles are thematised through three character construction techniques, broadly derived from the doppelgänger motif. It then demonstrates how eating disorders and self-harm are included in normative femininity and suggests that such self-directed violence can be interpreted as coping strategies to overcome feelings of fragmentation related to contradictive femininity. Looking at novels, artwork, manga, anime, TV dramas and news stories, the book analyses both globally well known Japanese culture such as Murakami Haruki’s literary works and Miyazaki Hayao’s animation, as well as culture unavailable to non-Japanese readers. The aim of juxtaposing such diverse narrative and visual culture is to map common storylines and thematisation techniques about normative femininity, self-harm and eating disorders. Furthermore, it shows how women’s private struggles with their own bodies have become public discourse available for consumption as entertainment and lifestyle products. Highly interdisciplinary, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese studies, Japanese culture and society and gender and women's studies, as well as to academics and consumers of Japanese literature, manga and animation.

The Way We Eat Now

The Way We Eat Now PDF Author: Bee Wilson
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093981
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
An award-winning food writer takes us on a global tour of what the world eats--and shows us how we can change it for the better Food is one of life's great joys. So why has eating become such a source of anxiety and confusion? Bee Wilson shows that in two generations the world has undergone a massive shift from traditional, limited diets to more globalized ways of eating, from bubble tea to quinoa, from Soylent to meal kits. Paradoxically, our diets are getting healthier and less healthy at the same time. For some, there has never been a happier food era than today: a time of unusual herbs, farmers' markets, and internet recipe swaps. Yet modern food also kills--diabetes and heart disease are on the rise everywhere on earth. This is a book about the good, the terrible, and the avocado toast. A riveting exploration of the hidden forces behind what we eat, The Way We Eat Now explains how this food revolution has transformed our bodies, our social lives, and the world we live in.

Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture

Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture PDF Author: Timothy J. Craig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317467205
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
A fascinating illustrated look at various forms of Japanese popular culture: pop song, jazz, enka (a popular ballad genre of music), karaoke, comics, animated cartoons, video games, television dramas, films and "idols" -- teenage singers and actors. As pop culture not only entertains but is also a reflection of society, the book is also about Japan itself -- its similarities and differences with the rest of the world, and how Japan is changing. The book features 32 pages of manga plus 50 additional photos, illustrations, and shorter comic samples.

Tea From an Empty Cup

Tea From an Empty Cup PDF Author: Pat Cadigan
Publisher: Gateway
ISBN: 0575120274
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
"How can you drink tea from an empty cup?" That ancient Zen riddle holds the key to a baffling mystery; a young man found with his throat slashed while locked alone in a virtual reality parlor. The secret of this enigmatic death lies in an apocalyptic cyberspace shadow-world where nothing is certain, and even one's own identity can change in an instant.