Download or read book Building a Modern Japan written by M. Low and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-05-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late Nineteenth-century, the Japanese embarked on a program of westernization in the hope of building a strong and modern nation. Science, technology and medicine played an important part, showing European nations that Japan was a world power worthy of respect. It has been acknowledged that state policy was important in the development of industries but how well-organized was the state and how close were government-business relations? The book seeks to answer these questions and others. The first part deals with the role of science and medicine in creating a healthy nation. The second part of the book is devoted to examining the role of technology, and business-state relations in building a modern nation.
Download or read book Modern Kyoto written by Alice Y. Tseng and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can an imperial city survive, let alone thrive, without an emperor? Alice Y. Tseng answers this intriguing question in Modern Kyoto, a comprehensive study of the architectural and urban projects carried out in the old capital following Emperor Meiji’s move to Tokyo in 1868. Tseng contends that Kyoto—from the time of the relocation to the height of the Asia-Pacific War—remained critical to Japan’s emperor-centered national agenda as politicians, planners, historians, and architects mobilized the city’s historical connection to the imperial house to develop new public architecture, infrastructure, and urban spaces. Royal births, weddings, enthronements, and funerals throughout the period served as catalysts for fashioning a monumental modern city fit for hosting commemorative events for an eager domestic and international audience. Using a wide range of visual material (including architectural plans, postcards, commercial maps, and guidebooks), Tseng traces the development of four core areas of Kyoto: the palaces in the center, the Okazaki Park area in the east, the Kyoto Station area in the south, and the Kitayama district in the north. She offers an unprecedented framework that correlates nation building, civic boosterism, and emperor reverence to explore a diverse body of built works. Interlinking microhistories of the Imperial Garden, Heian Shrine, Lake Biwa Canal, the prefectural library, zoological and botanical gardens, main railway station, and municipal art museum, among others, her work asserts Kyoto’s vital position as a multifaceted center of culture and patriotism in the expanding Japanese empire. Richly illustrated with many never-before-published photographs and archival sources, Modern Kyoto challenges readers to look beyond Tokyo for signposts of Japan’s urban modernity and opens up the study of modern emperors to incorporate fully built environments and spatial practices dedicated in their name.
Download or read book Designing Modern Japan written by Sarah Teasley and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-05-06 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at Japanese design weaving together the stories of people who shaped Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics. From cars to cameras, design from Japan is ubiquitous. So are perceptions of Japanese design, from calming, carefully crafted minimalism to avant-garde catwalk fashion, or the cute, Kawaii aesthetic populating Tokyo streets. But these portrayals overlook the creativity, generosity, and sheer hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining design industries in Japan. In Designing Modern Japan, Sarah Teasley deftly weaves together the personal stories of people who shaped and shape Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics.. Key to her account is how design has been a strategy to help communities thrive during turbulent times, and for making life better along the way. Deeply researched and superbly illustrated, Designing Modern Japan appeals to a wide audience for Japanese design, history, and culture.
Download or read book The Making of Modern Japan written by Marius B. Jansen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 933 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magisterial in vision, sweeping in scope, this monumental work presents a seamless account of Japanese society during the modern era, from 1600 to the present. A distillation of more than fifty years’ engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience. Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan’s ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture. Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due. The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world’s most compelling transformations.
Download or read book The Art of Japanese Architecture written by David Young and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Japanese Architecture presents a complete overview of Japanese architecture in its historical and cultural context. The book begins with a discussion of early prehistoric dwellings and concludes with a description of works by important modern Japanese architects. Along the way it discusses the iconic buildings and architectural styles for which Japan is so justly famous--from elegant Shinden and Sukiya aristocratic villas like the Kinkakuji "Golden Pavilion" in Kyoto, to imposing Samurai castles like Himeji and Matsumoto, and tranquil Zen Buddhist gardens and tea houses to rural Minka thatched-roof farmhouses and Shinto shrines. Each period in the development of Japan's architecture is described in detail and the most important structures are shown and discussed--including dozens of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The aesthetic trends in each period are presented within the context of Japanese society at the time, providing a unique in-depth understanding of the way Japanese architectural styles and buildings have developed over time and the great variety that is visible today. The book is profusely illustrated with hundreds of hand-drawn 3D watercolor illustrations and color photos as well as prints, maps and diagrams. The new edition features dozens of new photographs and a handy hardcover format that is perfect for travelers.
Download or read book House and Home in Modern Japan written by Jordan Sand and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A house is a site, the bounds and focus of a community. It is also an artifact, a material extension of its occupants’ lives. This book takes the Japanese house in both senses, as site and as artifact, and explores the spaces, commodities, and conceptions of community associated with it in the modern era. As Japan modernized, the principles that had traditionally related house and family began to break down. Even where the traditional class markers surrounding the house persisted, they became vessels for new meanings, as housing was resituated in a new nexus of relations. The house as artifact and the artifacts it housed were affected in turn. The construction and ornament of houses ceased to be stable indications of their occupants’ social status, the home became a means of personal expression, and the act of dwelling was reconceived in terms of consumption. Amid the breakdown of inherited meanings and the fluidity of modern society, not only did the increased diversity of commodities lead to material elaboration of dwellings, but home itself became an object of special attention, its importance emphasized in writing, invoked in politics, and articulated in architectural design. The aim of this book is to show the features of this culture of the home as it took shape in Japan."
Download or read book Building the Japanese House Today written by Peggy Landers Rao and published by . This book was released on 2005-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional Japanese house is universally admired for its clean lines, intricate joinery, and unparalleled woodworking. The authors of this elegant volume, Peggy Landers Rao and Len Brackett, show how a classic Japanese- style house can be built to offer the warmth and comfort that modern homeowners require. Len Brackett, rigorously trained in traditional architecture in Kyoto, has spent decades adapting the ancient Japanese design aesthetic to Western needs. He builds traditional live-on-the-floor houses, as well as versions that accommodate furniture. Both types provide the essential features expected in today's new homes - central heating, insulation, weather stripping, thermal glazing, streamlined kitchens, computerized lighting systems, and the latest electronics. The book's primary focus is on a single guesthouse in California, but pictures of other adaptations of the traditional Japanese house in America exemplify various points. Architects will find reference charts of the prescribed set of proportions and dimensions normally passed down through a strict system of apprenticeship. anticipating shrinkage of various woods. A remarkable tool used to lay out precise joints is described in detail. Various sources are given for materials, including where to find a contemporary version of the distinctive, traditional earthen plaster.
Download or read book Beriberi in Modern Japan written by Alexander R. Bay and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the medical and scientific debate about the etiology of the disease as it played out between diet theorists and contagionists from 1880 to 1940. In modern Japan, beriberi (or thiamin deficiency) became a public health problem that cut across all social boundaries, afflicting even the Meiji Emperor. During an age of empire building for the Japanese nation, incidence rates in the military ranged from 30 percent in peacetime to 90 percent during war. Doctors and public health officials called beriberi a "national disease" because it festered within the bodies of the people and threatened the health ofthe empire. Nevertheless, they could not agree over what caused the disease, attributing it to a diet deficiency or a microbe. In Beriberi in Modern Japan, Alexander R. Bay examines the debates over the etiologyof this "national disease" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Etiological consensus came after World War I, but the struggle at the national level to direct beriberi prevention continued, peaking during wartime mobilization. War served as the context within which scientific knowledge of beriberi and its prevention was made. The story of beriberi research is not simply about the march toward the inevitable discovery of "the beriberi vitamin," but rather the history of the role of medicine in state-making and empire-building in modern Japan. Alexander Bay is assistant professor of history at Chapman University.
Download or read book Building Japan 1868 1876 written by Richard Henry Brunton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal account of one of the Westerners who helped build modern Japan (see also study by Pedlar - also available from Curzon Press).
Download or read book Modern Japan A Very Short Introduction written by Christopher Goto-Jones and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-04-23 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan is arguably today's most successful industrial economy, combining almost unprecedented affluence with social stability and apparent harmony. Japanese goods and cultural products are consumed all over the world, ranging from animated movies and computer games all the way through to cars, semiconductors, and management techniques. In many ways, Japan is an icon of the modern world, and yet it remains something of an enigma to many, who see it as a confusing montage of the alien and the familiar, the ancient and modern. The aim of this Very Short Introduction is to explode the myths and explore the reality of modern Japan - by taking a concise look at its history, economy, politics, and culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Political History of Modern Japan written by Kitaoka Shinichi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the 130-year period between the end of the Tokugawa Era and the end of the Cold War, this book introduces students to the formation, collapse, and rebirth of the modern Japanese state. It demonstrates how, faced with foreign threats, Japan developed a new governing structure to deal with these challenges and in turn gradually shaped its international environment. Had Japan been a self-sufficient power, like the United States, it is unlikely that external relations would have exercised such great control over the nation. And, if it were a smaller country, it may have been completely pressured from the outside and could not have influenced the global stage on its own. For better or worse therefore, this book argues, Japan was neither too large nor too small. Covering the major events, actors, and institutions of Japan’s modern history, the key themes discussed include: Building the Meiji state and Constitution. The establishment of Parliament. The First Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. Party Politics and International Cooperation. The Pacific War. Development of LDP politics. Changes in the international order and the end of the Cold War. This book, written by one of Japan's leading experts on Japan's political history, will be an essential resource for students of Japanese modern history and politics.
Download or read book The Entrepreneur who Built Modern Japan written by Masakazu Shimada and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this penetrating biography of Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931), one of Japan's foremost entrepreneurs, Shimada Masakazu traces Shibusawa's youth, when he witnessed the decay of Japan's feudal society and experienced the benefits of modernization at first hand in Europe; his service in the Ministry of Finance of the new Meiji government in its early years; and his venture into business and involvement in literally hundreds of companies as he set about building the roots of modern corporate Japan. Shimada also looks closely at Shibusawa's social activities and his insistence that economics and morals are inseparable. In troubled times like the present, when the limits of capitalism are being seen around the world, Shibusawa's vision is as relevant as ever"--Back cover.
Download or read book Modern Japan written by Elise K. Tipton and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from the Tokugwa period to the present day, this text provides a concise and fascinating introduction to the social, cultural and political history of modern Japan. Tipton covers political and economic developments and shows how they relate to social themes and developments. Her survey covers traditional political history as well as areas growing in interest: gender issues, labor conditions and ethnic minorities.
Download or read book Japan culture of Wood written by Christoph Henrichsen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Mirror of Modernity written by Stephen Vlastos and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-05 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays challenges the notion that Japan's present cultural identity is the simple legacy of its pre-modern and insular past. Scholars examine "age-old" Japanese cultural practices and show these to be largely creations of the modern era.
Download or read book Modern Japan written by James L. Huffman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A valuable companion reference Concentrating on the period following Admiral Perry's visit in the 1850's, the encyclopedia examines the historical events, leaders, and societal pressures in the country's recent past that affected Japan's entry into the modern age. Like its companion volume, the encyclopedia covers important political topics, the arts, religion, business, literature, education, journalism, and other major social, cultural, and economic forces. Looks at the emperor and nationalism Emphasizing the close ties that always existed between the emperor system and nationalism, the encyclopedia carefully explores the various forms of nationalism that flourished since the middle of the last century, discusses how hte supernationalism of the beginning of the century ultimately led to World War II, looks at the uniquely Japanese custom of national self-analysis, and examines the country's remarkable postwar market-building economic nationalism. Charts major influences and contemporary concerns The Encyclopedia brings together in a single volume the major themes and currents that influenced and shaped Japan into a modern economic giant. Ranging over the entire spectrum of modern Japanese history, expert contributors provide concise entries on specific episodes and individuals, as well as longer articles on broad topics such as militarism, labor, cinema, censorship, and returning students. The Encyclopedia also examines many of the forces driving Japan today: trade relationships, attitudes towards World War II, the role of national defense, whether to revise the constitution, dealing with unskilled foreign labor, and more. All major entries are followed by an English-language bibliography for pursuing subjects in depth.
Download or read book The Human Tradition in Modern Japan written by Anne Walthall and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is a collection of short biographies of ordinary Japanese men and women, most of them unknown outside their family and locality, whose lives collectively span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their stories present a counterweight to the prevailing stereotypes, providing students with depictions of real people through the records they have left-records that detail experiences and aspirations. The Human Tradition in Modern Japan offers a human-scale perspective that focuses on individuals, reconstitutes the meaning of people's experiences as they lived through them, and puts a human face on history. It skillfully bridges the divides between the sexes, between the local and the national, and between rural and urban, as well as spanning crucial moments in the history of modern Japan. The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is an excellent resource for courses on Japanese history, East Asian history, and peoples and cultures of Japan.
