Author: Jennifer Robertson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520283198
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in mass and social media throughout the world. In Robo sapiens japanicus, Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourse of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, and animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether “civil rights” should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body with a deconstruction of the much-invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.
Robo Sapiens Japanicus
Author: Jennifer Robertson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520283198
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in mass and social media throughout the world. In Robo sapiens japanicus, Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourse of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, and animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether “civil rights” should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body with a deconstruction of the much-invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520283198
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in mass and social media throughout the world. In Robo sapiens japanicus, Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourse of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, and animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether “civil rights” should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body with a deconstruction of the much-invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.
Nation-Empire
Author: Sayaka Chatani
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate supporters of Japanese imperial nationalism? And what happened to these youth after the war? Nation-Empire investigates these questions by examining the long-term mobilization of youth in the rural peripheries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Personal stories and village histories vividly show youth’s ambitions, emotions, and identities generated in the shifting conditions in each locality. At the same time, Sayaka Chatani unveils an intense ideological mobilization built from diverse contexts—the global rise of youth and agrarian ideals, Japan’s strong drive for assimilation and nationalization, and the complex emotions of younger generations in various remote villages. Nation-Empire engages with multiple historical debates. Chatani considers metropole-colony linkages, revealing the core characteristics of the Japanese Empire; discusses youth mobilization, analyzing the Japanese seinendan (village youth associations) as equivalent to the Boy Scouts or the Hitler Youth; and examines society and individual subjectivities under totalitarian rule. Her book highlights the shifting state-society transactions of the twentieth-century world through the lens of the Japanese Empire, inviting readers to contend with a new approach to, and a bold vision of, empire study.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate supporters of Japanese imperial nationalism? And what happened to these youth after the war? Nation-Empire investigates these questions by examining the long-term mobilization of youth in the rural peripheries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Personal stories and village histories vividly show youth’s ambitions, emotions, and identities generated in the shifting conditions in each locality. At the same time, Sayaka Chatani unveils an intense ideological mobilization built from diverse contexts—the global rise of youth and agrarian ideals, Japan’s strong drive for assimilation and nationalization, and the complex emotions of younger generations in various remote villages. Nation-Empire engages with multiple historical debates. Chatani considers metropole-colony linkages, revealing the core characteristics of the Japanese Empire; discusses youth mobilization, analyzing the Japanese seinendan (village youth associations) as equivalent to the Boy Scouts or the Hitler Youth; and examines society and individual subjectivities under totalitarian rule. Her book highlights the shifting state-society transactions of the twentieth-century world through the lens of the Japanese Empire, inviting readers to contend with a new approach to, and a bold vision of, empire study.
A Study of Shinto
Author: Genchi Katō
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415564984
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
This text investigates and presents the salient features of Shinto through a long history of development from its remote past up to the present. It is a historical study of Shinto from a scientific point of view, illustrating the higher aspects of the religion, compiled on strict lines of religious comparison.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415564984
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
This text investigates and presents the salient features of Shinto through a long history of development from its remote past up to the present. It is a historical study of Shinto from a scientific point of view, illustrating the higher aspects of the religion, compiled on strict lines of religious comparison.
Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan
Author: Andrea Germer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766714X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan makes a unique contribution to the international literature on the formation of modern nation–states in its focus on the gendering of the modern Japanese nation-state from the late nineteenth century to the present. References to gender relations are deeply embedded in the historical concepts of nation and nationalism, and in the related symbols, metaphors and arguments. Moreover, the development of the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity and the development of the modern nation-state are processes which occurred simultaneously. They were the product of a shift from a stratified, hereditary class society to a functionally-differentiated social body. This volume includes the work of an international group of scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany, which in many cases appears in English for the first time. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the formation of the modern Japanese nation–state, including comparative perspectives from research on the formation of the modern nation–state in Europe, thus bringing research on Japan into a transnational dialogue. This volume will be of interest in the fields of modern Japanese history, gender studies, political science and comparative studies of nationalism.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766714X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan makes a unique contribution to the international literature on the formation of modern nation–states in its focus on the gendering of the modern Japanese nation-state from the late nineteenth century to the present. References to gender relations are deeply embedded in the historical concepts of nation and nationalism, and in the related symbols, metaphors and arguments. Moreover, the development of the binary opposition between masculinity and femininity and the development of the modern nation-state are processes which occurred simultaneously. They were the product of a shift from a stratified, hereditary class society to a functionally-differentiated social body. This volume includes the work of an international group of scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia and Germany, which in many cases appears in English for the first time. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the formation of the modern Japanese nation–state, including comparative perspectives from research on the formation of the modern nation–state in Europe, thus bringing research on Japan into a transnational dialogue. This volume will be of interest in the fields of modern Japanese history, gender studies, political science and comparative studies of nationalism.
The Meiji Restoration
Author: Robert Hellyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108478050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301
Book Description
This volume examines the Meiji Restoration through a global history lens to re-interpret the formation of a globally-cast, Japanese nation-state.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108478050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301
Book Description
This volume examines the Meiji Restoration through a global history lens to re-interpret the formation of a globally-cast, Japanese nation-state.
Japanese Nation
Author: Nitobé Inazo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136215913
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
This is an important document in the history of Japanese-American relations. In 2002, President Bush spoke of the great Japanese scholar and statesman Inazo Nitobe, who envisioned a future of friendship between the two nations. This book is one of the means by which Nitobe sought to bridge the Pacific. Writing before World War I, he presents a detailed account of Japan and the Japanese in terms easily understandable to western readers, emphasising points of similarity rather than difference, often citing the work of western historians and philosophers in order to explain Japanese practices, always searching for common aims and goals. He deals with the effect of the past on the present, national characteristics, religious beliefs, morals and moral ideals, education, economic conditions, Japan as coloniser, relations between the United States and Japan, and America’s influence in the Far East, concluding with the hope that wherever else war may break out, lasting peace would reign over the Pacific. In this he was disappointed, but the fact that Nitobe is cited today as the architect of Japanese-American friendship makes this volume essential reading for the historian.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136215913
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
This is an important document in the history of Japanese-American relations. In 2002, President Bush spoke of the great Japanese scholar and statesman Inazo Nitobe, who envisioned a future of friendship between the two nations. This book is one of the means by which Nitobe sought to bridge the Pacific. Writing before World War I, he presents a detailed account of Japan and the Japanese in terms easily understandable to western readers, emphasising points of similarity rather than difference, often citing the work of western historians and philosophers in order to explain Japanese practices, always searching for common aims and goals. He deals with the effect of the past on the present, national characteristics, religious beliefs, morals and moral ideals, education, economic conditions, Japan as coloniser, relations between the United States and Japan, and America’s influence in the Far East, concluding with the hope that wherever else war may break out, lasting peace would reign over the Pacific. In this he was disappointed, but the fact that Nitobe is cited today as the architect of Japanese-American friendship makes this volume essential reading for the historian.
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution
Author: Levi McLaughlin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824877896
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Soka Gakkai is Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization: It claims more than 8 million Japanese households and close to 2 million members in 192 countries and territories. The religion is best known for its affiliated political party, Komeito (the Clean Government Party), which comprises part of the ruling coalition in Japan’s National Diet, and it exerts considerable influence in education, media, finance, and other key areas. Levi McLaughlin’s comprehensive account of Soka Gakkai draws on nearly two decades of archival research and non-member fieldwork to account for its institutional development beyond Buddhism and suggest how we should understand the activities and dispositions of its adherents. McLaughlin explores the group’s Nichiren Buddhist origins and turns to insights from religion, political science, anthropology, and cultural studies to characterize Soka Gakkai as mimetic of the nation-state. Ethnographic vignettes combine with historical evidence to demonstrate ways Soka Gakkai’s twin Buddhist and modern humanist legacies inform the organization’s mimesis of the modern Japan in which the group took shape. To make this argument, McLaughlin analyzes Gakkai sources heretofore untreated in English-language scholarship; provides a close reading of the serial novel The Human Revolution, which serves the Gakkai as both history and de facto scripture; identifies ways episodes from members’ lives form new chapters in its growing canon; and contributes to discussions of religion and gender as he chronicles the lives of members who simultaneously reaffirm generational transmission of Gakkai devotion as they pose challenges for the organization’s future. Readers looking for analyses of the nation-state and strategies for understanding New Religions and modern Buddhism will find Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution to be an especially thought-provoking study that offers widely applicable theoretical models.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824877896
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Soka Gakkai is Japan’s largest and most influential new religious organization: It claims more than 8 million Japanese households and close to 2 million members in 192 countries and territories. The religion is best known for its affiliated political party, Komeito (the Clean Government Party), which comprises part of the ruling coalition in Japan’s National Diet, and it exerts considerable influence in education, media, finance, and other key areas. Levi McLaughlin’s comprehensive account of Soka Gakkai draws on nearly two decades of archival research and non-member fieldwork to account for its institutional development beyond Buddhism and suggest how we should understand the activities and dispositions of its adherents. McLaughlin explores the group’s Nichiren Buddhist origins and turns to insights from religion, political science, anthropology, and cultural studies to characterize Soka Gakkai as mimetic of the nation-state. Ethnographic vignettes combine with historical evidence to demonstrate ways Soka Gakkai’s twin Buddhist and modern humanist legacies inform the organization’s mimesis of the modern Japan in which the group took shape. To make this argument, McLaughlin analyzes Gakkai sources heretofore untreated in English-language scholarship; provides a close reading of the serial novel The Human Revolution, which serves the Gakkai as both history and de facto scripture; identifies ways episodes from members’ lives form new chapters in its growing canon; and contributes to discussions of religion and gender as he chronicles the lives of members who simultaneously reaffirm generational transmission of Gakkai devotion as they pose challenges for the organization’s future. Readers looking for analyses of the nation-state and strategies for understanding New Religions and modern Buddhism will find Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution to be an especially thought-provoking study that offers widely applicable theoretical models.
Japan: Nation Building Nature
Author: Joachim Nijs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789462086135
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
A new history of modern Japanese architecture, from an environmental perspective Joachim Nijs' Japan: Nation Building Natureis the first book to map out the views of nature that have shaped the widely acclaimed but often misunderstood modern architecture of Japan. By connecting the dots between philosophy, design, geopolitics and an earnest quest for a greener tomorrow, this book explains how Japanese culture can shed new light on our understanding of ecology, and vice versa. Using a distinctive blend of academic research and personal experience, Nijs draws on architectural history to navigate Japan's complex and unique ecological ethic through the lens of four typological phenomena: earthquakes, monsoon climates, nuclear erasure of life and insularity. This imaginative and refreshing book offers key insights and references for anyone wishing to deepen their knowledge of Japan and its architecture.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789462086135
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
A new history of modern Japanese architecture, from an environmental perspective Joachim Nijs' Japan: Nation Building Natureis the first book to map out the views of nature that have shaped the widely acclaimed but often misunderstood modern architecture of Japan. By connecting the dots between philosophy, design, geopolitics and an earnest quest for a greener tomorrow, this book explains how Japanese culture can shed new light on our understanding of ecology, and vice versa. Using a distinctive blend of academic research and personal experience, Nijs draws on architectural history to navigate Japan's complex and unique ecological ethic through the lens of four typological phenomena: earthquakes, monsoon climates, nuclear erasure of life and insularity. This imaginative and refreshing book offers key insights and references for anyone wishing to deepen their knowledge of Japan and its architecture.
Nation and Nationalism in Japan
Author: Sandra Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135024464
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Nationalism was one of the most important forces in 20th century Japan. It pervaded almost all aspects of Japanese life, but was a complex phenomenon, frequently changing, and often meaning different things to different people. This book brings together interesting, original new work, by a range of international leading scholars who consider Japanese nationalism in a wide variety of its aspects. Overall, the book provides many new insights and much new thinking on what continues to be a crucially important factor shaping current developments in Japan.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135024464
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Nationalism was one of the most important forces in 20th century Japan. It pervaded almost all aspects of Japanese life, but was a complex phenomenon, frequently changing, and often meaning different things to different people. This book brings together interesting, original new work, by a range of international leading scholars who consider Japanese nationalism in a wide variety of its aspects. Overall, the book provides many new insights and much new thinking on what continues to be a crucially important factor shaping current developments in Japan.
Japan as a 'Normal Country'?
Author: Yoshihide Soeya
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442694254
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
For decades, Japan's foreign policy has been seen by both internal and external observers as abnormal in relation to its size and level of sophistication. Japan as a 'Normal Country'? is a thematic and geographically comparative discussion of the unique limitations of Japanese foreign and defence policy. The contributors reappraise the definition of normality and ask whether Japan is indeed abnormal, what it would mean to become normal, and whether the country can—or should—become so. Identifying constraints such as an inflexible constitution, inherent antimilitarism, and its position as a U.S. security client, Japan as a 'Normal Country'? goes on to analyse factors that could make Japan a more effective regional and global player. These essays ultimately consider how Japan could leverage its considerable human, cultural, technological, and financial capital to benefit both its citizens and the world.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442694254
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
For decades, Japan's foreign policy has been seen by both internal and external observers as abnormal in relation to its size and level of sophistication. Japan as a 'Normal Country'? is a thematic and geographically comparative discussion of the unique limitations of Japanese foreign and defence policy. The contributors reappraise the definition of normality and ask whether Japan is indeed abnormal, what it would mean to become normal, and whether the country can—or should—become so. Identifying constraints such as an inflexible constitution, inherent antimilitarism, and its position as a U.S. security client, Japan as a 'Normal Country'? goes on to analyse factors that could make Japan a more effective regional and global player. These essays ultimately consider how Japan could leverage its considerable human, cultural, technological, and financial capital to benefit both its citizens and the world.