Vanishing Japan

Vanishing Japan PDF Author: Elizabeth Kiritani
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462904270
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
This classic text of Japanese culture contains a wealth of information about traditional Japan and Japanese customs. Pawnshops and handmade paper, shoe shiners and Shinto jugglers, money rakes and mosquito netting--all these were once a familiar part of daily life in Japan. Many elements of that daily life, like the Obon dances and oreiboko apprenticeships, have no counterpart in any other culture: they are purely unique to Japan. But with the tremendous changes of the modern age, most traces of traditional life in Japan are fast disappearing, soon to be gone forever. Still, there are a few holdouts, especially in Japan's shitamachi, or working-class neighborhoods, where many of the survivors of Japanese crafts, art forms, and festivals are making their last stand. Vanishing Japan is a must-read for tourists, historians, architects, or artists who are interested in Japanese culture.

Vanishing Japan

Vanishing Japan PDF Author: Elizabeth Kiritani
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462904270
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
This classic text of Japanese culture contains a wealth of information about traditional Japan and Japanese customs. Pawnshops and handmade paper, shoe shiners and Shinto jugglers, money rakes and mosquito netting--all these were once a familiar part of daily life in Japan. Many elements of that daily life, like the Obon dances and oreiboko apprenticeships, have no counterpart in any other culture: they are purely unique to Japan. But with the tremendous changes of the modern age, most traces of traditional life in Japan are fast disappearing, soon to be gone forever. Still, there are a few holdouts, especially in Japan's shitamachi, or working-class neighborhoods, where many of the survivors of Japanese crafts, art forms, and festivals are making their last stand. Vanishing Japan is a must-read for tourists, historians, architects, or artists who are interested in Japanese culture.

Audience and Actors

Audience and Actors PDF Author: Jacob Raz
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004658254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description


Searching for Japan

Searching for Japan PDF Author: Michele Monserrati
Publisher: Transnational Italian Cultures
ISBN: 1789621070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book pursues the specific case of Italian travel narratives in the Far East, through a focus on the experience of Japan in works by writers who visited the Land of the Rising Sun beginning in the Meiji period (1868-1912) and during the concomitant opening of Japan's relations with the West. Drawing from the fields of Postcolonial and Transnational Studies, analysis of these texts explores one central question: what does it mean to imagine Japanese culture as contributing to Italian culture? Each author shares in common an attempt to disrupt ideas about dichotomies and unbalanced power relationships between East and West. Proposing the notion of 'relational Orientalism, ' this book suggests that Italian travelogues to Japan, in many cases, pursued the goal of building imaginary transnational communities, predicated on commonalities and integration, by claiming what they perceived as 'Oriental' as their own. In contrast with a long history of Western representations of Japan as inferior and irrational, Searching for Japan identifies a positive overarching attitude toward the Far East country in modern Italian culture. Expanding the horizon of Italian transnational networks, normally situated within the Southern European region, this book reinstates the existence of an alternative Euro-Asian axis, operating across Italian history.

Japan--culture of Wood

Japan--culture of Wood PDF Author: Christoph Henrichsen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : de
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Japan ist weltweit der Inbegriff fÃ1/4r traditionelles Bauen mit Holz und vielfältigste Verwendungen dieses Werkstoffes in allen Lebensbereichen. Auf der Grundlage einer langen handwerklichen Tradition entstehen Produkte von unerreichter technischer Raffinesse, materialgerechter Verarbeitung und minimalistischer Gestaltung. Das Buch stellt die Produkte, Techniken, handwerklichen HintergrÃ1/4nde und Herstellungsschritte von rund dreißig Typen vor: von BrÃ1/4cken Ã1/4ber Wohnhäuser, SchiebetÃ1/4ren und Möbel bis hin zu Behältnissen, Werkzeugen und Musikinstrumenten. Im Mittelpunkt der Beschreibung steht die Genese der Gegenstände. Die einzelnen Arbeitsschritte von der Materialauswahl bis zum Oberflächenfinish wurden von dem renommierten Fotografen Roland Bauer vor Ort in faszinierenden Bildsequenzen festgehalten. Zusammen mit den Detailzeichnungen werden so Aufbau und Herstellung der Holzobjekte begreifbar und nachvollziehbar gemacht.

Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan

Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan PDF Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521277860
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The cultural practices and cultural meaning of health care in urban Japan.

Tea Culture of Japan

Tea Culture of Japan PDF Author: Sadako Ohki
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Examines the importance of Japanese tea culture and the ways in which it has evolved over the centuries, with photographs and detailed explanations of the Tea Culture of Japan exhibit organized by the Yale University Art Gallery.

Moon Living Abroad Japan

Moon Living Abroad Japan PDF Author: Ruthy Kanagy
Publisher: Moon Travel
ISBN: 1631216406
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Moon Travel Guides: Make Your Move! From visas, to job-hunting, to cultural assimilation, get a head start on your life-changing move with Moon Living Abroad Japan. Inside you'll find: Practical information on setting up the essentials, including visas, finances, employment, education, and healthcare Firsthand insight on navigating the language and culture from experienced expat Ruthy Kanagy, an American raised in Japan Tips on finding housing that suits your needs and budget, whether you're renting or buying A thorough survey of the many regions, provinces, and individual cultures that Japan encompasses, to help you find the right new home for you Interviews with other expats who share their personal experiences building successful lives abroad How to plan a fact-finding trip before making the move to familiarize yourself with aspects of daily life in Japan: internet and phone access, schooling, banking, insurance, travel, transportation, and more Special tips for those making the move with children or pets Moon Living Abroad Japan takes the hassle out of planning your move, giving you the insider tips, practical resources, and local know-how to start your new life abroad!

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons

Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons PDF Author: Haruo Shirane
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231526520
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media—from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.

Drawing on Tradition

Drawing on Tradition PDF Author: Jolyon Baraka Thomas
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824835891
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. Drawing on Tradition examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption through a methodological synthesis of narrative and visual analysis, history, and ethnography. Rather than merely describing the incidence of religions such as Buddhism or Shinto in these media, Jolyon Baraka Thomas shows that authors and audiences create and re-create “religious frames of mind” through their imaginative and ritualized interactions with illustrated worlds. Manga and anime therefore not only contribute to familiarity with traditional religious doctrines and imagery, but also allow authors, directors, and audiences to modify and elaborate upon such traditional tropes, sometimes creating hitherto unforeseen religious ideas and practices. The book takes play seriously by highlighting these recursive relationships between recreation and religion, emphasizing throughout the double sense of play as entertainment and play as adulteration (i.e., the whimsical or parodic representation of religious figures, doctrines, and imagery). Building on recent developments in academic studies of manga and anime—as well as on recent advances in the study of religion as related to art and film—Thomas demonstrates that the specific aesthetic qualities and industrial dispositions of manga and anime invite practices of rendition and reception that can and do influence the ways that religious institutions and lay authors have attempted to captivate new audiences. Drawing on Tradition will appeal to both the dilettante and the specialist: Fans and self-professed otaku will find an engaging academic perspective on often overlooked facets of the media and culture of manga and anime, while scholars and students of religion will discover a fresh approach to the complicated relationships between religion and visual media, religion and quotidian practice, and the putative differences between “traditional” and “new” religions.

Handmade Culture

Handmade Culture PDF Author: Morgan Pitelka
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824862740
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Handmade Culture is the first comprehensive and cohesive study in any language to examine Raku, one of Japan’s most famous arts and a pottery technique practiced around the world. More than a history of ceramics, this innovative work considers four centuries of cultural invention and reinvention during times of both political stasis and socioeconomic upheaval. It combines scholarly erudition with an accessible story through its lively and lucid prose and its generous illustrations. The author’s own experiences as the son of a professional potter and a historian inform his unique interdisciplinary approach, manifested particularly in his sensitivity to both technical ceramic issues and theoretical historical concerns. Handmade Culture makes ample use of archaeological evidence, heirloom ceramics, tea diaries, letters, woodblock prints, and gazetteers and other publications to narrate the compelling history of Raku, a fresh approach that sheds light not only on an important traditional art from Japan, but on the study of cultural history itself.