Ruins of Identity

Ruins of Identity PDF Author: Mark Hudson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Annotation In its examination of the processes of ethnogenesis -- the formation of ethnic groups -- Ruins of Identity offers an approach to ethnicity that differs fundamentally from that found in most Japanese scholarship and popular discourse.

Ruins of Identity

Ruins of Identity PDF Author: Mark Hudson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Annotation In its examination of the processes of ethnogenesis -- the formation of ethnic groups -- Ruins of Identity offers an approach to ethnicity that differs fundamentally from that found in most Japanese scholarship and popular discourse.

Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands

Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands PDF Author: Bruce Loyd Batten
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870718014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the long course of Japan's history, its people profited from their rich natural environment while simultaneously facing significant environmental challenges. Over time, they have altered their natural environment in numerous ways, from landscape modification to industrial pollution. How has the human-nature relationship changed over time in Japan? How does Japan's environmental history compare with that of other countries, or that of the world as a whole? Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands attempts to answer these questions through a series of case studies by leading Japanese and Western historians, geographers, archaeologists, and climatologists. These essays, on diverse topics from all periods of Japanese history and prehistory, are unified by their focus on the key concepts of "resilience" and "risk mitigation." Taken as a whole, they place Japan's experience in global context and call into question the commonly presumed division between pre-modern and modern environmental history. Primarily intended for scholars and students in fields related to Japan or environmental history, these accessibly-written essays will be valuable to anyone wishing to learn about the historical roots of today's environmental issues or the complex relationship between human society and the natural environment.

Resistant Islands

Resistant Islands PDF Author: Gavan McCormack
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Now in a thoroughly updated edition, Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The base is a hot-button issue in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan’s 2011 natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister who tried to stop construction of yet another base on the island and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship—indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.

Islands of Protest

Islands of Protest PDF Author: Davinder L. Bhowmik
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824858263
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Literature is an important vehicle to further knowledge of other cultures, and English translations of Okinawan literary works have had a major impact on the field of Okinawan studies. Yet the riches of Okinawa's literature have yet to be adequately mined. Islands of Protest attempts to address this lacuna with this new selection of critically acclaimed modern and contemporary works in English. The anthology includes poetry, fiction, and drama, drawing on Okinawa's distinct culture and subtropical natural environment to convey the emotions and tensions present in everyday life. Tōma Hiroko's poem "Backbone" juxtaposes the natural environment of aquamarine beaches and subtropical flora and fauna with the built environment of America's military bases. Stories by two of Okinawa's most dynamic contemporary authors display wide breadth, from the preservation of island dances and burial practices in Sakiyama Tami's "Island Confinement" and "Come Swaying, Come Swinging" to the bold, disquieting themes of violence and comfort women in Medoruma Shun's "Hope," "Taiwan Woman," and "Tree of Butterflies." The crown jewel of the anthology, Chinen Seishin's play The Human Pavilion, is based on an infamous historical incident in which Okinawans were put on display during a 1903 industrial exhibition in Osaka. In his 1978 masterpiece, Chinen depicts the relentless pressure on Okinawans to become more Japanese. Given the controversial presence of U.S. military forces in Okinawa, this book is particularly timely. Disputes between the United States and Japanese governments over construction of a new marine airbase at Henoko have led to the resignation of Japan's prime minister, the election of an anti-base governor, and repeated protests. Islands of Protest offers a compelling entrée into a complex culture, one marked by wartime decimation, relentless discrimination, and fierce resistance, yet often overshadowed by the clichéd notion of a gentle Okinawa so ceaselessly depicted in Japan's mass media.

Japan's Islands of Mystery

Japan's Islands of Mystery PDF Author: Willard Price
Publisher: New York : John Day
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


The Return of the Amami Islands

The Return of the Amami Islands PDF Author: Robert D. Eldridge
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739107102
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"State Department's desire to uphold the Atlantic Charter by rejecting territorial expansion; Amamian activists' assertive argument for reversion to Japanese rule; and the Japanese government's work to reach an agreement with the United States. Eldridge draws on original documents from the reversion movement, several volumes of memoirs and remembrances written by participants in the movement, and numerous declassified documents of the Japanese and U.S. governments.

Distant Islands

Distant Islands PDF Author: Daniel H. Inouye
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607327937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Distant Islands is a modern narrative history of the Japanese American community in New York City between America's centennial year and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Often overshadowed in historical literature by the Japanese diaspora on the West Coast, this community, which dates back to the 1870s, has its own fascinating history. The New York Japanese American community was a composite of several micro communities divided along status, class, geographic, and religious lines. Using a wealth of primary sources—oral histories, memoirs, newspapers, government documents, photographs, and more—Daniel H. Inouye tells the stories of the business and professional elites, mid-sized merchants, small business owners, working-class families, menial laborers, and students that made up these communities. The book presents new knowledge about the history of Japanese immigrants in the United States and makes a novel and persuasive argument about the primacy of class and status stratification and relatively weak ethnic cohesion and solidarity in New York City, compared to the pervading understanding of nikkei on the West Coast. While a few prior studies have identified social stratification in other nikkei communities, this book presents the first full exploration of the subject and additionally draws parallels to divisions in German American communities. Distant Islands is a unique and nuanced historical account of an American ethnic community that reveals the common humanity of pioneering Japanese New Yorkers despite diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and life stories. It will be of interest to general readers, students, and scholars interested in Asian American studies, immigration and ethnic studies, sociology, and history. Winner- Honorable Mention, 2018 Immigration and Ethnic History Society First Book Award

Islands of Discontent

Islands of Discontent PDF Author: Laura Elizabeth Hein
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742518667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Exploring contemporary Okinawan culture, politics, and historical memory, this book argues that the long Japanese tradition of defining Okinawa as a subordinate and peripheral part of Japan means that all claims of Okinawan distinctiveness necessarily become part of the larger debate over contemporary identity. The contributors trace the renascence of the debate in the burst of cultural and political expression that has flowered in the past decade, with the rapid growth of local museums and memorials and the huge increase in popularity of distinctive Okinawan music and literature, as well as in political movements targeting both U.S. military bases and Japanese national policy on ecological, developmental, and equity grounds. A key strategy for claiming and shaping Okinawan identity is the mobilization of historical memory of the recent past, particularly of the violent subordination of Okinawan interests to those of the Japanese and American governments in war and occupation. Its intertwining themes of historical memory, nationality, ethnicity, and cultural conflict in contemporary society address central issues in anthropology, sociology, contemporary history, Asian Studies, international relations, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies. Contributions by: Matt Allen, Linda Isako Angst, Asato Eiko, Gerald Figal, Aaron Gerow, Laura Hein, Michael Molasky, Steve Rabson, James E. Roberson, Mark Selden, and Julia Yonetani.

Coral and Concrete

Coral and Concrete PDF Author: Greg Dvorak
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824855248
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak’s cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple “atollscapes” of Kwajalein’s past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between “little stories” of ordinary human actors and “big stories” of global politics—drawing upon the “little” metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the “big” metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past. Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into conversation with Micronesians’ recollections of colonialism and war. This transnational history—built upon a combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies—thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as well as Dvorak’s own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.

The Japanese Islands

The Japanese Islands PDF Author: Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description