New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan

New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan PDF Author: Helen Hardacre
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004107359
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 882

Get Book Here

Book Description
These essays on Meiji Japan, written by scholars from nine nations, reflect a determination to destabilize existing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities, in favor of a multiplicity of perspectives that privilege subjectivity and the inclusion of non-elite groups.

New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan

New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan PDF Author: Helen Hardacre
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004107359
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 882

Get Book Here

Book Description
These essays on Meiji Japan, written by scholars from nine nations, reflect a determination to destabilize existing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities, in favor of a multiplicity of perspectives that privilege subjectivity and the inclusion of non-elite groups.

New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan

New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan PDF Author: Helen Hardacre
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004644849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 872

Get Book Here

Book Description
These essays on Meiji Japan, written by scholars from nine nations, reflect a determination to destabilize existing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities, in favor of a multiplicity of perspectives that privilege subjectivity and the inclusion of non-elite groups.

Southern Exposure

Southern Exposure PDF Author: Michael Molasky
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824823009
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
Southern Exposure is the first anthology of Okinawan literature to appear in English translation, and it appears at a propitious time. Although Okinawa Prefecture comprises only one percent of Japan's population, its writers have been winning a disproportionate number of literary awards in recent years--including the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for fiction, which was awarded to Matayoshi Eiki in 1996 and to Medoruma Shun in 1997. Both Matayoshi and Medoruma are represented in this anthology, which includes a wide range of fiction as well as a sampling of poetry from the 1920s to the present day. Modern Okinawa has been forged by a history of conquest and occupation by mainland Japan and the United States. Its sense of dual subjugation and the propensity of its writers to confront their own complicity with Japanese militarism imbues Okinawa's literary tradition with insightful perspectives on a wide range of issues. But this tradition is as deeply rooted in the region's lush semitropical landscape as in the forces of history. As this anthology demonstrates, Okinawan writers often suffuse their works with a lyricism and humor that disarms readers while bringing them face to face with the region's richly ambiguous legacy.

Doctors of Empire

Doctors of Empire PDF Author: Hoi-eun Kim
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442660481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description
The history of German medicine has undergone intense scrutiny because of its indelible connection to Nazi crimes. What is less well known is that Meiji Japan adopted German medicine as its official model in 1869. In Doctors of Empire, Hoi-eun Kim recounts the story of the almost 1,200 Japanese medical students who rushed to German universities to learn cutting-edge knowledge from the world leaders in medicine, and of the dozen German physicians who were invited to Japan to transform the country’s medical institutions and education. Shifting fluently between German, English, and Japanese sources, Kim’s book uses the colourful lives of these men to examine the impact of German medicine in Japan from its arrival to the pinnacle of its influence and its abrupt but temporary collapse at the outbreak of the First World War. Transnational history at its finest, Doctors of Empire not only illuminates the German origins of modern medical science in Japan but also reinterprets the nature of German imperialism in East Asia.

A Companion to Japanese History

A Companion to Japanese History PDF Author: William M. Tsutsui
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405193395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633

Get Book Here

Book Description
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

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan PDF Author: Steve Rabson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
The experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, like those of migrant minorities elsewhere, derive from a legacy of colonialism, war, and alien rule. Okinawans have long coped with a society in which differences are often considered “strange” or “wrong,” and with a central government that has imposed a mono-cultural standard in education, publicly priding itself on the nation’s mythical “homogeneity.” They have felt strong pressures to assimilate by adopting mainland Japanese culture and concealing or discarding their own. Recently, however, a growing pride in roots has inspired more Okinawan migrants and their descendants to embrace their own history and culture and to speak out against inequities. Their experiences, like those of minorities in other countries, have opened them to an acute and illuminating perspective, given voice in personal testimony, literature, and song. Although much has been written on Okinawan emigration abroad, this is the first book in English to consider the Okinawan diaspora in Japan. It is based on a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, including interviews conducted by the author in the greater Osaka area over a two-year period. The work begins with the experiences of women who worked in Osaka’s spinning factories in the early twentieth century, covers the years of the Pacific War and the prolonged U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, and finally treats the period following Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Throughout, it examines the impact of government and corporate policies, along with popular attitudes, for a compelling account of the Okinawan diaspora in the context of contemporary Japan’s struggle to acknowledge its multiethnic society. The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan will find a ready audience among students of contemporary Japanese history and East Asian societies, as well as general readers interested in Okinawans and other minorities living in Japan.

Japanese Visual Culture

Japanese Visual Culture PDF Author: Mark W. MacWilliams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317467000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.

Translating the West

Translating the West PDF Author: Douglas R. Howland
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824824624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this rich and absorbing analysis of the transformation of political thought in nineteenth-century Japan, Douglas Howland examines the transmission to Japan of key concepts--liberty, rights, sovereignty, and society--from Western Europe and the United States. Because Western political concepts did not translate well into their language, Japanese had to invent terminology to engage Western political thought. This work of westernization served to structure historical agency as Japanese leaders undertook the creation of a modern state. Where scholars have previously treated the introduction of Western political thought to Japan as a simple migration of ideas from one culture to another, Howland undertakes an unprecedented integration of the history of political concepts and the semiotics of translation techniques. He demonstrates that Japanese efforts to translate the West must be understood as problems both of language and action--as the creation and circulation of new concepts and the usage of these new concepts in debates about the programs and policies to be implemented in a westernizing Japan. Translating the West will interest scholars of East Asian studies and translation studies and historians of political thought, liberalism, and modernity.

Evaluating Evidence

Evaluating Evidence PDF Author: George Akita
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824862422
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Evaluating Evidence is based on the grueling lessons learned by a senior scholar during three decades of tutoring by, and collaboration with, Japanese historians. George Akita persisted in the difficult task of reading documentary sources in Japanese, most written in calligraphic style (sôsho), out of the conviction of their centrality to the historian’s craft and his commitment to a positivist methodology to research and scholarship. He argues forcefully in this volume for an inductive process in which the scholar seeks out facts on a subject and, through observation and examination of an extensive body of data, is able to discern patterns until it is possible to formulate certain propositions. In his introduction, Akita relates how and why he decided to adopt a positivist approach and explains what he means by the term as it applies to humanistic studies. He enumerates the difficulties linked with reading primary sources in Japanese by looking at a variety of unpublished and published materials and identifying a major problem in reading published primary sources: the intervention of editors and compilers. He illustrates the pitfalls of such intervention by comparing the recently published seventeen-volume diary of Prime Minister Hara Takashi (1856–1921), a photo reproduction of the diary in Hara’s own hand, and an earlier published version. Using documents related to Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922), a figure of central importance in Japan’s post-Restoration political history, he demonstrates the use of published and transcribed primary sources to sustain, question, or strengthen some of the themes and approaches adopted by non-Japanese scholars working on modern Japanese history. He ends his inquiry with two "case studies," examining closely the methods of the highly acclaimed American historians John W. Dower and Herbert P. Bix.

Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan

Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan PDF Author: M. Mason
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137330880
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recasts the commonly dismissed colonial project pursued in Hokkaido during the Meiji era (1868-1912) as a major force in the production of modern Japan's national identity, imperial ideology, and empire.