Download or read book Faking Liberties written by Jolyon Baraka Thomas and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious freedom is a founding tenet of the United States, and it has frequently been used to justify policies towards other nations. Such was the case in 1945 when Americans occupied Japan following World War II. Though the Japanese constitution had guaranteed freedom of religion since 1889, the United States declared that protection faulty, and when the occupation ended in 1952, they claimed to have successfully replaced it with “real” religious freedom. Through a fresh analysis of pre-war Japanese law, Jolyon Baraka Thomas demonstrates that the occupiers’ triumphant narrative obscured salient Japanese political debates about religious freedom. Indeed, Thomas reveals that American occupiers also vehemently disagreed about the topic. By reconstructing these vibrant debates, Faking Liberties unsettles any notion of American authorship and imposition of religious freedom. Instead, Thomas shows that, during the Occupation, a dialogue about freedom of religion ensued that constructed a new global set of political norms that continue to form policies today.

Download or read book The Invention of Religion in Japan written by Jason Ānanda Josephson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

Download or read book Second Best Justice written by J. Mark Ramseyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s long been known that Japanese file fewer lawsuits per capita than Americans do. Yet explanations for the difference have tended to be partial and unconvincing, ranging from circular arguments about Japanese culture to suggestions that the slow-moving Japanese court system acts as a deterrent. With Second-Best Justice, J. Mark Ramseyer offers a more compelling, better-grounded explanation: the low rate of lawsuits in Japan results not from distrust of a dysfunctional system but from trust in a system that works—that sorts and resolves disputes in such an overwhelmingly predictable pattern that opposing parties rarely find it worthwhile to push their dispute to trial. Using evidence from tort claims across many domains, Ramseyer reveals a court system designed not to find perfect justice, but to “make do”—to adopt strategies that are mostly right and that thereby resolve disputes quickly and economically. An eye-opening study of comparative law, Second-Best Justice will force a wholesale rethinking of the differences among alternative legal systems and their broader consequences for social welfare.

Download or read book Drawing on Tradition written by Jolyon Baraka Thomas and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book MacArthur s Japanese Constitution written by Kyoko Inoue and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991-02 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Japanese constitution as revised by General MacArthur in 1946, while generally regarded to be an outstanding basis for a liberal democracy, is at the same time widely considered to be—in its Japanese form—an document which is alien and incompatible with Japanese culture. Using both linguistics and historical data, Kyoto Inoue argues that despite the inclusion of alien concepts and ideas, this constitution is nonetheless fundamentally a Japanese document that can stand on its own. "This is an important book. . . . This is the most significant work on postwar Japanese constitutional history to appear in the West. It is highly instructive about the century-long process of cultural conflict in the evolution of government and society in modern Japan."—Thomas W. Burkman, Monumenta Nipponica

Download or read book The Miracles of the Kasuga Deity written by Royall Tyler and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this annotated translation and study of an early fourteenth-century Japanese devotional picture scroll set, Royall Tyler illuminates the complex relationships between medieval Japanese religion and politics, text, and art. The Kasuga Gongen genki ("The Miracles of the Kasuga Deity") mingles text and painting on silk to tell the tale of miraculous events at the Kasuga shrine in Nara, a site favored by the dominant Fujiwara clan for centuries. The work's values are aristocratic, but the text sheds light on the syncretic nature of the era's religious practices, allowing Tyler to collapse the distinction between high and low forms of medieval Japanese religion. Tyler provides a detailed examination of the scrolls, the shrine, and their history and political role. He also elucidates the scrolls' relationship to literary genre and religious practice, including the interaction between Shintoism and Buddhism. His copious annotations describe the work's historical context, as well as its religious and cultural influences. This study is essential for scholars of religion, art historians, and cultural historians alike.

Download or read book World Report 2018 written by Human Rights Watch and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 810 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human rights records of more than ninety countries and territories are put into perspective in Human Rights Watch's signature yearly report. Reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken in 2016 by Human Rights Watch staff, in close partnership with domestic human rights activists, the annual World Report is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fight to protect human rights in every corner of the globe.

Download or read book Law in Everyday Japan written by Mark D. West and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lawsuits are rare events in most people's lives. High-stakes cases are even less commonplace. Why is it, then, that scholarship about the Japanese legal system has focused almost exclusively on epic court battles, large-scale social issues, and corporate governance? Mark D. West's Law in Everyday Japan fills a void in our understanding of the relationship between law and social life in Japan by shifting the focus to cases more representative of everyday Japanese life. Compiling case studies based on seven fascinating themes—karaoke-based noise complaints, sumo wrestling, love hotels, post-Kobe earthquake condominium reconstruction, lost-and-found outcomes, working hours, and debt-induced suicide—Law in Everyday Japan offers a vibrant portrait of the way law intermingles with social norms, historically ingrained ideas, and cultural mores in Japan. Each example is informed by extensive fieldwork. West interviews all of the participants-from judges and lawyers to defendants, plaintiffs, and their families-to uncover an everyday Japan where law matters, albeit in very surprising ways.

Download or read book Japanese Confucianism written by Kiri Paramore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the history of Confucianism in Japan to offer new perspectives on the sociology of Confucianiam across East Asia.

Download or read book The Common Cause written by Robert G. Parkinson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Revolutionary War began, the odds of a united, continental effort to resist the British seemed nearly impossible. Few on either side of the Atlantic expected thirteen colonies to stick together in a war against their cultural cousins. In this pathbreaking book, Robert Parkinson argues that to unify the patriot side, political and communications leaders linked British tyranny to colonial prejudices, stereotypes, and fears about insurrectionary slaves and violent Indians. Manipulating newspaper networks, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow agitators broadcast stories of British agents inciting African Americans and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion. Using rhetoric like "domestic insurrectionists" and "merciless savages," the founding fathers rallied the people around a common enemy and made racial prejudice a cornerstone of the new Republic. In a fresh reading of the founding moment, Parkinson demonstrates the dual projection of the "common cause." Patriots through both an ideological appeal to popular rights and a wartime movement against a host of British-recruited slaves and Indians forged a racialized, exclusionary model of American citizenship.

Download or read book Shinto and the State 1868 1988 written by Helen Hardacre and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores church/state question in Japan. Focuses on the ordinary people whose lives are affected by the ongoing struggle of the Japanese to define their national character and policy.

Download or read book Japanese Law written by J. Mark Ramseyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this introduction to Japanese law, J. Mark Ramseyer and Minoru Nakazato combine an economic approach with a clear and often amusing account of the law itself to challenge commonly held ideas about the law. Arguing against such things as the assumption that Japanese law differs from law in the United States and the idea that law plays only a trivial role in Japan or is culturally determined, this book will be recognized as a major contribution to the understanding of Japanese law. "A compelling economic analysis. . . . This book remains one of the few concerning Japanese law that successfully brings to life the legal culture of Japan." —Bonnie L. Dixon, New York Law Journal

Download or read book Religious Freedom written by Tisa Wenger and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious freedom is so often presented as a timeless American ideal and an inalienable right, appearing fully formed at the founding of the United States. That is simply not so, Tisa Wenger contends in this sweeping and brilliantly argued book. Instead, American ideas about religious freedom were continually reinvented through a vibrant national discourse--Wenger calls it "religious freedom talk--that cannot possibly be separated from the evolving politics of race and empire. More often than not, Wenger demonstrates, religious freedom talk worked to privilege the dominant white Christian population. At the same time, a diverse array of minority groups at home and colonized people abroad invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life. In so doing they posed sharp challenges to the racial and religious exclusions of American life. People of almost every religious stripe have argued, debated, negotiated, and brought into being an ideal called American religious freedom, subtly transforming their own identities and traditions in the process. In a post-9/11 world, Wenger reflects, public attention to religious freedom and its implications is as consequential as it has ever been.

Download or read book Arguments for Liberty written by Aaron Ross Powell and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two schools of thought have long dominated libertarian discussions about ethics: utilitarianism and natural rights. Those two theories are important, but they’re not the only ways people think about ethics and political philosophy. In Arguments for Liberty, you’ll find a broader approach to libertarianism. In each of Arguments for Liberty’s nine chapters a different political philosopher discusses how his or her preferred school of thought judges political institutions and why libertarianism best meets that standard. Though they end up in the same place, the paths they take diverge in fascinating ways. Readers will find in these pages not only an excellent introduction to libertarianism, but also a primer on some of the most important political and ethical theories. Assuming little or no training in academic philosophy, the essays guide readers through a continuous moral conversation spanning centuries and continents, from Aristotle in ancient Athens to twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls in the halls of Harvard. What’s the best political system? What standards should we use to decide, and why? Arguments for Liberty is a guide to thinking about these questions. It’s also a powerful, nine-fold argument for the goodness and importance of human liberty.

Download or read book Wise Blood written by Flannery O'Connor and published by Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 1980 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was an American author. Wise Blood was her first novel and one of her most famous works.

Download or read book The Manchurian Candidate written by Richard Condon and published by RosettaBooks. This book was released on 2013-11-25 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic thriller about a hostile foreign power infiltrating American politics: “Brilliant . . . wild and exhilarating.” —The New Yorker A war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret—even from himself. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon—a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president . . . This “shocking, tense” and sharply satirical novel has become a modern classic, and was the basis for two film adaptations (San Francisco Chronicle). “Crammed with suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Condon is wickedly skillful.” —Time

Download or read book Chains written by Laurie Halse Anderson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl? As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom. From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel that shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.