Download or read book Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan written by Christine Guth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Crafts were central to daily life in early modern Japan. They were powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and identity, and how and from what materials they were made were matters of serious concern among all classes of society. In Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan, Christine M. E. Guth examines the network of forces--both material and immaterial--that supported Japan's rich, diverse, and aesthetically sophisticated artifactual culture between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Exploring the institutions, modes of thought, and reciprocal relationships among people, materials, and tools, she draws particular attention to the role of women in crafts, embodied knowledge, and the special place of lacquer as a medium. By examining the ways and values of making that transcend specific media and practices, Guth illuminates the 'craft culture' of early modern Japan"--
Download or read book Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan written by Christine M. E. Guth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Articles crafted from lacquer, silk, cotton, paper, ceramics, and iron were central to daily life in early modern Japan. They were powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and identity, and their facture was a matter of serious concern among makers and consumers alike. In this innovative study, Christine M. E. Guth offers a holistic framework for appreciating the crafts produced in the city and countryside, by celebrity and unknown makers, between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Her study throws into relief the confluence of often overlooked forces that contributed to Japan’s diverse, dynamic, and aesthetically sophisticated artifactual culture. By bringing into dialogue key issues such as natural resources and their management, media representations, gender and workshop organization, embodied knowledge, and innovation, she invites readers to think about Japanese crafts as emerging from cooperative yet competitive expressive environments involving both human and nonhuman forces. A focus on the material, sociological, physiological, and technical aspects of making practices adds to our understanding of early modern crafts by revealing underlying patterns of thought and action within the wider culture of the times.
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 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 Crafting Rural Japan written by Shilla Lee and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-22 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the place of creative village policy in the revitalisation of rural Japan, highlighting how rural Japan is moving from a state of regional extinction to regional rejuvenation. Using the case study of Tamba Sasayama in Hyogo Prefecture, where collective initiatives by local government and the role of the local traditional potters are invested in fostering an aura of creativity in the region, the book examines the complex social relations and the intertwining values of different actors to illustrate how a growing outlook on creativity, rurality, and rural creativity requires a renewed perspective on and of rural Japan. Based on extensive field research, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Japanese studies, rural studies, and anthropology.
Download or read book Fermented Craftsmanship in the Bottle written by Andrey Sgorla and published by Ethics International Press. This book was released on 2024-09-15 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the construction of new forms of work, drawing on the experiences of craft brewers, and pointing to the relationship between learning, career paths, and entrepreneurship in the context of the craft economy. The development and growth of microbreweries represent an opportunity for entrepreneurship in the craft sector, offering a growth space for entrepreneurs who wish to create and promote high-quality products while enhancing local resources and contributing to the vitality of the local economy. Through this dynamic, it is possible to study the process of incorporation of specialised knowledge, skills and competencies that occurs through work practices. The experience of craft brewers is part of a global phenomenon of individuals who decide to invest in new craft professions, and give new directions to their lives; a choice guided by autonomy, flexibility, passion and the pleasure of work. The book explores the re-evaluation of manual work, the authenticity, creativity, innovation and quality of artisan production, the distinction between artisanal and industrial products, and craftsmanship as a critical element reflecting the changes taking place in the economy and the new professions. The book adopts an ethnographic and multidisciplinary approach that embraces anthropology, sociology, economics, geography, and education.
Download or read book Handmade Culture written by Morgan Pitelka and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2005-10-31 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Spectacular Accumulation written by Morgan Pitelka and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Spectacular Accumulation, Morgan Pitelka investigates the significance of material culture and sociability in late sixteenth-century Japan, focusing in particular on the career and afterlife of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate. The story of Ieyasu illustrates the close ties between people, things, and politics and offers us insight into the role of material culture in the shift from medieval to early modern Japan and in shaping our knowledge of history. This innovative and eloquent history of a transitional age in Japan reframes the relationship between culture and politics. Like the collection of meibutsu, or "famous objects," exchanging hostages, collecting heads, and commanding massive armies were part of a strategy Pitelka calls "spectacular accumulation," which profoundly affected the creation and character of Japan's early modern polity. Pitelka uses the notion of spectacular accumulation to contextualize the acquisition of "art" within a larger complex of practices aimed at establishing governmental authority, demonstrating military dominance, reifying hierarchy, and advertising wealth. He avoids the artificial distinction between cultural history and political history, arguing that the famed cultural efflorescence of these years was not subsidiary to the landscape of political conflict, but constitutive of it. Employing a wide range of thoroughly researched visual and material evidence, including letters, diaries, historical chronicles, and art, Pitelka links the increasing violence of civil and international war to the increasing importance of samurai social rituals and cultural practices. Moving from the Ashikaga palaces of Kyoto to the tea utensil collections of Ieyasu, from the exchange of military hostages to the gift-giving rituals of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Spectacular Accumulation traces Japanese military rulers' power plays over famous artworks as well as objectified human bodies.
Download or read book Expeditions in the Long Nineteenth Century written by Jörn Happel and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-24 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the processes of scientific, cultural, political, technical, colonial and violent appropriation during the 19th century. The 19th century was the century of world travel. The earth was explored, surveyed, described, illustrated, and categorized. Travelogues became world bestsellers. Modern technology accompanied the travelers and adventurers: clocks, a postal and telegraph system, surveying equipment, and cameras. The world grew together faster and faster. Previously unknown places became better known: the highest peaks, the coldest spots, the hottest deserts, and the most remote cities. Knowledge about the white spots of the earth was systematically collected. Those who made a name for themselves in the 19th century are still read today. Alexander von Humboldt or Charles Darwin made the epoch a scientific heyday. Ida Pfeiffer or Isabelle Bird (Bishop) traveled to distant continents and took their readers at home on insightful journeys. Hermann Vámbéry or Sir Richard Burton got to know the most remote languages and regions. There are countless travel reports about a fascinating century, which, with surveying and exploration, also brought colonial conquest and exploitation into the world. In ten individual studies, the authors explore travelers from all over the world and analyze their successes. The unifying element of all the studies is the experience of distance and its communication by means of travelogues to the armchair travelers who have stayed at home. This volume will be of value to students and scholars both interested in modern history, social and cultural history, and the history of science and technology.
Download or read book The Point of the Needle written by Barbara Burman and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2023-08-25 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the pleasures of mending to the problems of fast fashion, an intimate look at the creativity, community, and deep meaning sewed into every stitch. Tens of millions of people sew for necessity or pleasure every day, yet the craft is surprisingly under-appreciated. The Point of the Needle redresses the balance: this is a book that argues for sewing’s place in our lives. It celebrates not only sewing’s recent resurgence but sewists’ creativity, well-being, and community. Barbara Burman chronicles new voices of people who sew today, by hand or machine, to explore what they sew, what motivates them, what they value, and why they mend things, revealing insights into sewing’s more intimate stories. In our age of superfast fashion with its environmental and social injustices, this eloquent book makes a passionate case for identity, diversity, resilience, and memory—what people create for themselves as they stitch and make.
Download or read book Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process written by Dana Buntrock and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architects throughout the world hold Japan's best architecture in high regard, considering the country's buildings among the world's most carefully crafted and innovative. While many books, magazines, and exhibitions have focused on the results of architectural practice in Japan, this book is the first to explain the reasons for Japan's remarkable structures. Architecture does not occur in isolation; Japan's architects are able to collaborate with a wide variety of people from professional consultants to constructors. Dana Buntrock discusses architecture as a part of the construction community, moving from historical precedents that predate the emergence of the architectural profession in Japan through to contemporary practices.
Download or read book Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan written by Christopher Harding and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late nineteenth century, religious ideas and practices in Japan have become increasingly intertwined with those associated with mental health and healing. This relationship developed against the backdrop of a far broader, and deeply consequential meeting: between Japan’s long-standing, Chinese-influenced intellectual and institutional forms, and the politics, science, philosophy, and religion of the post-Enlightenment West. In striving to craft a modern society and culture that could exist on terms with – rather than be subsumed by – western power and influence, Japan became home to a religion--psy dialogue informed by pressing political priorities and rapidly shifting cultural concerns. This book provides a historically contextualized introduction to the dialogue between religion and psychotherapy in modern Japan. In doing so, it draws out connections between developments in medicine, government policy, Japanese religion and spirituality, social and cultural criticism, regional dynamics, and gender relations. The chapters all focus on the meeting and intermingling of religious with psychotherapeutic ideas and draw on a wide range of case studies including: how temple and shrine ‘cures’ of early modern Japan fared in the light of German neuropsychiatry; how Japanese Buddhist theories of mind, body, and self-cultivation negotiated with the findings of western medicine; how Buddhists, Christians, and other organizations and groups drew and redrew the lines between religious praxis and psychological healing; how major European therapies such as Freud’s fed into self-consciously Japanese analyses of and treatments for the ills of the age; and how distress, suffering, and individuality came to be reinterpreted across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from the southern islands of Okinawa to the devastated northern neighbourhoods of the Tohoku region after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011. Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan will be welcomed by students and scholars working across a broad range of subjects, including Japanese culture and society, religious studies, psychology and psychotherapy, mental health, and international history.
Download or read book Kingdom of Beauty written by Kim Brandt and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-20 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Kingdom of Beauty shows that the discovery of mingei (folk art) by Japanese intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s was central to the complex process by which Japan became both a modern nation and an imperial world power. Kim Brandt’s account of the mingei movement locates its origins in colonial Korea, where middle-class Japanese artists and collectors discovered that imperialism offered them special opportunities to amass art objects and gain social, cultural, and even political influence. Later, mingei enthusiasts worked with (and against) other groups—such as state officials, fascist ideologues, rival folk art organizations, local artisans, newspaper and magazine editors, and department store managers—to promote their own vision of beautiful prosperity for Japan, Asia, and indeed the world. In tracing the history of mingei activism, Brandt considers not only Yanagi Muneyoshi, Hamada Shōji, Kawai Kanjirō, and other well-known leaders of the folk art movement but also the often overlooked networks of provincial intellectuals, craftspeople, marketers, and shoppers who were just as important to its success. The result of their collective efforts, she makes clear, was the transformation of a once-obscure category of pre-industrial rural artifacts into an icon of modern national style.
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 Encountering Things written by Leslie Atzmon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encountering Things brings together leading design scholars to explore the relationship between thing theory and design, exploring production processes and offering an engaging, theoretical perspective about the social and cultural lives of objects. Focusing on the themes of process and product, the contributors investigate the productive interplay between the activity of design and the objects that design uses and produces. Chapters span the design disciplines and essays examine the processes by which objects, things, and artifacts are made; the lives of design objects; and things in their cultural contexts. Theoretical discussion is encouraged by in-depth case studies of things themselves. Each chapter includes an informational sidebar per essay and a useful glossary of key terms.
Download or read book Tea of the Sages written by Patricia J. Graham and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1999-03-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Japanese tea ceremony is generally identified with chanoyu and its bowls of whipped, powdered green tea served in surroundings influenced by the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Tea of the Sages is the first English language study of the alternate tea tradition of sencha. At sencha tea gatherings, steeped green leaf tea is prepared in an atmosphere indebted to the humanistic values of the Chinese sages and the materialistic culture of elite Chinese society during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Although sencha once surpassed chanoyu in popularity, it is now overshadowed by chanoyu, despite the existence of more than a hundred sencha schools throughout Japan. This exceptionally well-illustrated volume explores sencha's philosophy and arts from the seventeenth century to the present. Introduced by Chinese merchants and scholar-monks, sencha first gained favor in Japan among devotees of the Chinese literati. By the early nineteenth century, it had become popular with a wide spectrum of urban and rural residents. Some took up sencha as a subversive activity in opposition to the mandated protocol of chanoyu. Others enjoyed sencha because of its connections with elite Chinese culture, knowledge of which indicated intellectual and cultural refinement. Still others relished it simply as a fine tasting beverage. Sencha inspired painters and poets and fostered major advances within craft industries from ceramics to metalwork and basketry. Sencha aficionados, many of whom became serious connoisseurs of Chinese art and antiquities, hosted some of the earliest public art exhibitions. Tea of the Sages opens with a chronological overview of tea in China and its transmission to Japan before situating sencha within the rich milieu of Chinese material culture available in early modern Japan. Subsequent chapters outline the multifaceted history of the formalization of the sencha tea ceremony, drawing upon sources such as treatises and less formal writings as well as analysis of tea gathering records, utensils and their prescribed arrangements, paintings, prints, and sencha architecture.
Download or read book Ceramics and Modernity in Japan written by Meghen Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ceramics and Modernity in Japan offers a set of critical perspectives on the creation, patronage, circulation, and preservation of ceramics during Japan’s most dramatic period of modernization, the 1860s to 1960s. As in other parts of the world, ceramics in modern Japan developed along the three ontological trajectories of art, craft, and design. Yet, it is widely believed that no other modern nation was engaged with ceramics as much as Japan—a "potter’s paradise"—in terms of creation, exhibition, and discourse. This book explores how Japanese ceramics came to achieve such a status and why they were such significant forms of cultural production. Its medium-specific focus encourages examination of issues regarding materials and practices unique to ceramics, including their distinct role throughout Japanese cultural history. Going beyond descriptive historical treatments of ceramics as the products of individuals or particular styles, the closely intertwined chapters also probe the relationship between ceramics and modernity, including the ways in which ceramics in Japan were related to their counterparts in Asia and Europe. Featuring contributions by leading international specialists, this book will be useful to students and scholars of art history, design, and Japanese studies.
