Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age

Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age PDF Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: MFA Publications
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Essays by Donald Keene, Anne Nishimura Morse, Frederic A. Sharf, Louise E. Virgin.

Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age

Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age PDF Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: MFA Publications
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book Here

Book Description
Essays by Donald Keene, Anne Nishimura Morse, Frederic A. Sharf, Louise E. Virgin.

Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age

Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age PDF Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: MFA Publications
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Essays by Donald Keene, Anne Nishimura Morse, Frederic A. Sharf, Louise E. Virgin.

Samurai Revolution

Samurai Revolution PDF Author: Romulus Hillsborough
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462913512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
"With his easily readable and entertaining style, Hillsborough does a great job of elucidating the complex customs that ruled Edo Period life and politics. --The Japan Times"

Japan on Display

Japan on Display PDF Author: Morris Low
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134195834
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Sixty years on from the end of the Pacific War, Japan on Display examines representations of the Meiji emperor, Mutsuhito (1852-1912) and his grandson the Showa emperor, Hirohito who was regarded as a symbol of the nation, in both war and peacetime. Much of this representation was aided by the phenomenon of photography. The introduction and development of photography in the nineteenth century coincided with the need to make Hirohito’s grandfather, the young Meiji Emperor, more visible. Photo books and albums became a popular format for presenting seemingly objective images of the monarch, reminding the Japanese of their proximity to the Emperor, and the imperial family. In the twentieth century, these 'national albums’ provided a visual record of wars fought in the name of the Emperor, while also documenting the reconstruction of Tokyo, scientific expeditions, and imperial tours. Drawing on archival documents, photographs, and sources in both Japanese and English, this book throws new light on the history of twentieth-century Japan and the central role of Hirohito. With Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, the Emperor was transformed from wartime leader to peace-loving scientist. Japan on Display seeks to understand this reinvention of a more 'human’ Emperor and the role that photography played in the process.

William B. Cushing in the Far East

William B. Cushing in the Far East PDF Author: Julian R. McQuiston
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786470550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Fresh from success in sinking the Albermarle in the Civil War, the young Captain Cushing was assigned to command the gunboat USS Maumee in Hong Kong to aid the restoration of America's naval power in Asia. By linking such aims to British policy, and by courting Chinese and Japanese officials, he succeeded in re-establishing American naval and commercial power in the Far East. In his letters to his fiancee, he brilliantly recorded his travels and observations of people and places (and the difficulties of reconciling his naval career with his devotion to her, whom he married in 1870).

Kamisaka Sekka

Kamisaka Sekka PDF Author: Sekka Kamisaka
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781741740776
Category : Art, Japanese
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This lavishly illustrated book brings to light the diverse work and the growing influence of this early 20th‐century Japanese artist and designer. Kamisaka Sekka (18661942), little known until recent years, is being reappreciated and influencing a new generation of artists and designers in Japan and beyond. Through over 200 illustrations discover the work of Kamisaka Sekka as well as early Rinpa masters and contemporary artist such as Yamaguchi Ai, Yamamoto Taró, Sydney‐based fashion designer Akira Isogawa and Kyoto-based textile artists Kenzo and Hiromu Takao. Sekka was awakened to an ancient and truly Japanese aesthetic through his travels in Europe where he saw the art nouveau style as well as the influence of Japonisme on European art. The aesthetic he revived is the art of Rinpa which was practised in Japan in late 16th and early 17th centuries when Kyoto was the countrys capital and cultural centre. Sekka sought to revive the courtly beauty of old Kyoto through his transmission of the Rinpa style into the modern industrial and consumer age, forging a unique visual language. Drawing on subjects such as birds, flowers and classical narrative scrolls, he created sumptuous, refined works not only in painting but also textiles, lacquerware, ceramics, furnishings, architecture and garden design. Blurring the boundary between art and craft, Sekka aimed to imbue all objects in our daily lives with an aesthetic quality.

Kyoto

Kyoto PDF Author: Matthew Stavros
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824847849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Kyoto was Japan’s political and cultural capital for more than a millennium before the dawn of the modern era. Until about the fifteenth century, it was also among the world’s largest cities and, as the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, it was a place where the political, artistic, and religious currents of Asia coalesced and flourished. Despite these and many other traits that make Kyoto a place of both Japanese and world historical significance, the physical appearance of the premodern city remains largely unknown. Through a synthesis of textual, pictorial, and archeological sources, this work attempts to shed light on Kyoto’s premodern urban landscape with the aim of opening up new ways of thinking about key aspects of premodern Japanese history. The book begins with an examination of Kyoto’s highly idealized urban plan (adapted from Chinese models in the eighth century) and the reasons behind its eventual failure. The formation of the suburbs of Kamigyō and Shimogyō is compared to the creation of large exurban temple-palace complexes by retired emperors from the late eleventh century. Each, it is argued, was a material manifestation of the advancement of privatized power that inspired a medieval discourse aimed at excluding “outsiders.” By examining this discourse, a case is made that medieval power holders, despite growing autonomy, continued to see the emperor and classical state system as the ultimate sources of political legitimacy. This sentiment was shared by the leaders of the Ashikaga shogunate, who established their headquarters in Kyoto in 1336. The narrative examines how these warrior leaders interacted with the capital’s urban landscape, revealing a surprising degree of deference to classical building protocols and urban codes. Remaining chapters look at the dramatic changes that took place during the Age of Warring States (1467–1580s) and Kyoto’s postwar revitalization under the leadership of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Nobunaga’s construction of Nijō Castle in 1569 transformed Kyoto’s fundamental character and, as Japan’s first castle town, it set an example soon replicated throughout the archipelago. In closing, the book explores how Hideyoshi—like so many before him, yet with much greater zeal—used monumentalism to co-opt and leverage the authority of Kyoto’s traditional institutions. Richly illustrated with original maps and diagrams, Kyoto is a panoramic examination of space and architecture spanning eight centuries. It narrates a history of Japan’s premodern capital relevant to the fields of institutional history, material culture, art and architectural history, religion, and urban planning. Students and scholars of Japan will be introduced to new ways of thinking about old historical problems while readers interested in the cities and architecture of East Asia and beyond will benefit from a novel approach that synthesizes a wide variety of sources. For more on Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital, visit www.kyotohistory.com.

On Their Own Terms

On Their Own Terms PDF Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674036476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

Theatricality of the Closet

Theatricality of the Closet PDF Author: Michelle Liu Carriger
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 081014591X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
A richly illustrated exploration of fashion and its capacity for generating controversy and constructing social and individual identities Clothing matters. This basic axiom is both common sense and, in another way, radical. It is from this starting point that Michelle Liu Carriger elucidates the interconnected ways in which gender, sexuality, class, and race are created by the everyday act of getting dressed. Theatricality of the Closet: Fashion, Performance, and Subjectivity between Victorian Britain and Meiji Japan examines fashion and clothing controversies of the nineteenth century, drawing on performance theory to reveal how the apparently superficial or frivolous deeply affects the creation of identity. By interrogating a set of seemingly disparate examples from the same period but widely distant settings—Victorian Britain and Meiji-era Japan—Carriger disentangles how small, local, ordinary practices became enmeshed in a global fabric of cultural and material surfaces following the opening of trade between these nations in 1850. This richly illustrated book presents an array of media, from conservative newspapers and tabloids to ukiyo-e and early photography, that locate dress as a site where the individual and the social are interwoven, whether in the 1860s and 1870s or the twenty-first century.

Science In China, 1600-1900: Essays By Benjamin A Elman

Science In China, 1600-1900: Essays By Benjamin A Elman PDF Author: Benjamin A Elman
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814651125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Distinguished historian Benjamin A Elman's collective volume on the history of science in imperial China, brings together over 30 years of historical literature on the subject. With updates to the literature and new material including transcripts of podcasts and translated interview articles, Science in China takes the reader on a journey starting in the early 17th century with the missionary efforts of the Jesuits in China, and ending with the Protestant missions in the 19th century. These two milestone encounters brought Western sciences to local Chinese scholars with great success in shaping modern Chinese science. Elman studies the interaction between Western and Chinese sciences through philological research and evidence, and treats the two encounters not as separate events but as a continuum of creative exchange of scientific knowledge and discourse.