Download or read book Japanese Sense of Self written by Nancy R. Rosenberger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection look at how the Japanese see themselves and others, in a variety of contexts, and challenge many Western assumptions about Japanese society. Through their own experiences and observations of Japanese life, the authors explain how the Japanese define themselves and how they communicate with those around them. They discuss what Westerners view as oppositions inherent within the Japanese community and demonstrate how the Japanese reconcile one with the other.
Download or read book The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic written by Takie Sugiyama Lebra and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The self serves as a universally available, effective, and indispensable filter for making sense of the chaos of the world. In her latest book, Takie Lebra attempts a new understanding of the Japanese self through her unique use of cultural logic. She begins by presenting and elaborating on two models ("opposition logic" and "contingency logic") to examine concepts of self, Japanese and otherwise. Guided by these, she delves into the three layers of the Japanese self, focusing first on the social layer as located in four "zones"—omote (front), uchi (interior), ura (back), and soto (exterior)—and its shifts from zone to zone. New light is shed on these familiar linguistic and spatial categories by introducing the dimension of civility. The book expands the discussion in relation to larger constructions of the inner and cosmological self. Unlike the social self, which views itself in relation to the "other," the inner layer involves a reflexivity in which self communicates with self. While the social self engages in dialogue or trialogue, the inner self communicates through monologue or soliloquy. The cosmological layer, which centers around transcendental beliefs and fantasies, is examined and the analysis supplemented with comments on aesthetics. Throughout, Lebra applies her methodology to dozens of Japanese examples and makes relevant comparisons with North American culture and notions of self. Finally, she provides a spirited analysis of critiques of Nihonjinron to reinforce the relevancy of Japanese studies. This volume is the culmination of decades of thinking on self and social relations by one of the most influential scholars in the field. It will prove highly instructive to Japanese and non-Japanese readers alike in a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and social psychology.
Download or read book In Search of Self in India and Japan written by Alan Roland and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on work with Indian and Japanese patients, a prominent American psychoanalyst explores inner worlds that are markedly different from the Western psyche. A series of fascinating case studies illustrates Alan Roland's argument: the "familial self," rooted in the subtle emotional hierarchical relationships of the family and group, predominates in Indian and Japanese psyches and contrasts strongly with the Western "individualized self." In perceptive and sympathetic terms Roland describes the emotional problems that occur when Indians and Japanese encounter Western culture and the resulting successful integration of new patterns that he calls the "expanding self." Of particular interest are descriptions of the special problems of women in changing society and of the paradoxical relationship of the "spiritual self" of Indians and Japanese to the "familial self.? Also described is Roland's own response to the broadening of his emotional and intellectual horizons as he talked to patients and supervised therapists in India and Japan. "As we were coming in for a landing to Bombay," he writes, "the plane banked so sharply that when I supposedly looked down all I could see were the stars, while if I looked up, there were the lights of the city." This is the "world turned upside down" that he describes so eloquently in this book. What he has learned will fascinate those who wish to deepen their understanding of a different way of being.
Download or read book Rice as Self written by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994-11-14 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we what we eat? What does food reveal about how we live and how we think of ourselves in relation to others? Why do people have a strong attachment to their own cuisine and an aversion to the foodways of others? In this engaging account of the crucial significance rice has for the Japanese, Rice as Self examines how people use the metaphor of a principal food in conceptualizing themselves in relation to other peoples. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney traces the changing contours that the Japanese notion of the self has taken as different historical Others--whether Chinese or Westerner--have emerged, and shows how rice and rice paddies have served as the vehicle for this deliberation. Using Japan as an example, she proposes a new cross-cultural model for the interpretation of the self and other.
Download or read book A Different Kind of Luxury written by Andy Couturier and published by Stone Bridge Press. This book was released on 2011-11-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 11 portraits from rural Japan to inspire choices in meaningful work, art, and sustainable living
Download or read book The Japanese Arts and Self Cultivation written by Robert Edgar Carter and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how spiritual values are learned and mind and body developed through the practice of the Japanese arts.
Download or read book Ikigai written by Héctor García and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • 2 MILLION+ COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE “Workers looking for more fulfilling positions should start by identifying their ikigai.” ―Business Insider “One of the unintended—yet positive—consequences of the [pandemic] is that it is forcing people to reevaluate their jobs, careers, and lives. Use this time wisely, find your personal ikigai, and live your best life.” ―Forbes Find your ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy) to live longer and bring more meaning and joy to all your days. “Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.” —Japanese proverb According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai—where what you love, what you’re good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs all overlap—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. It’s also the reason many Japanese never really retire (in fact there’s no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense it does in English): They remain active and work at what they enjoy, because they’ve found a real purpose in life—the happiness of always being busy. In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds—one of the world’s Blue Zones. Ikigai reveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and—their best-kept secret—how they find the ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai. Because who doesn’t want to find happiness in every day?
Download or read book Making Sense of Japanese written by Jay Rubin and published by Vertical Inc. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making Sense of Japanese is the fruit of one foolhardy American's thirty-year struggle to learn and teach the Language of the Infinite. Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter." To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably." The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence." Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out. "The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite. Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.
Download or read book Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan written by Patrick W. Galbraith and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From computer games to figurines and maid cafes, men called “otaku” develop intense fan relationships with “cute girl” characters from manga, anime, and related media and material in contemporary Japan. While much of the Japanese public considers the forms of character love associated with “otaku” to be weird and perverse, the Japanese government has endeavored to incorporate “otaku” culture into its branding of “Cool Japan.” In Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, Patrick W. Galbraith explores the conflicting meanings of “otaku” culture and its significance to Japanese popular culture, masculinity, and the nation. Tracing the history of “otaku” and “cute girl” characters from their origins in the 1970s to his recent fieldwork in Akihabara, Tokyo (“the Holy Land of Otaku”), Galbraith contends that the discourse surrounding “otaku” reveals tensions around contested notions of gender, sexuality, and ways of imagining the nation that extend far beyond Japan. At the same time, in their relationships with characters and one another, “otaku” are imagining and creating alternative social worlds.
Download or read book What Makes Life Worth Living written by Gordon Mathews and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996-04-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is an original and provocative anthropological approach to the fundamental philosophical question of what makes life worth living. Gordon Mathews considers this perennial issue by examining nine pairs of similarly situated individuals in the United States and Japan. In the course of exploring how people from these two cultures find meaning in their daily lives, he illuminates a vast and intriguing range of ideas about work and love, religion, creativity, and self-realization. Mathews explores these topics by means of the Japanese term ikigai, "that which most makes one's life seem worth living." American English has no equivalent, but ikigai applies not only to Japanese lives but to American lives as well. Ikigai is what, day after day and year after year, each of us most essentially lives for. Through the life stories of those he interviews, Mathews analyzes the ways Japanese and American lives have been affected by social roles and cultural vocabularies. As we approach the end of the century, the author's investigation into how the inhabitants of the world's two largest economic superpowers make sense of their lives brings a vital new understanding to our skeptical age.
Download or read book The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic written by Takie Sugiyama Lebra and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The self serves as a universally available, effective, and indispensable filter for making sense of the chaos of the world. In her latest book, Takie Lebra attempts a new understanding of the Japanese self through her unique use of cultural logic. She begins by presenting and elaborating on two models ("opposition logic" and "contingency logic") to examine concepts of self, Japanese and otherwise. Guided by these, she delves into the three layers of the Japanese self, focusing first on the social layer as located in four "zones"—omote (front), uchi (interior), ura (back), and soto (exterior)—and its shifts from zone to zone. New light is shed on these familiar linguistic and spatial categories by introducing the dimension of civility. The book expands the discussion in relation to larger constructions of the inner and cosmological self. Unlike the social self, which views itself in relation to the "other," the inner layer involves a reflexivity in which self communicates with self. While the social self engages in dialogue or trialogue, the inner self communicates through monologue or soliloquy. The cosmological layer, which centers around transcendental beliefs and fantasies, is examined and the analysis supplemented with comments on aesthetics. Throughout, Lebra applies her methodology to dozens of Japanese examples and makes relevant comparisons with North American culture and notions of self. Finally, she provides a spirited analysis of critiques of Nihonjinron to reinforce the relevancy of Japanese studies. This volume is the culmination of decades of thinking on self and social relations by one of the most influential scholars in the field. It will prove highly instructive to Japanese and non-Japanese readers alike in a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and social psychology.
Download or read book Working Across Cultures written by Martin J. Gannon and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2001 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 71 exercises in this book can help you provide students and trainees with the practical experience and knowledge needed to succeed in real-world situations. Drawing from over 15 years of cross-cultural training experience, the author has assembled a diverse number of engaging exercises that can be quickly implemented with minimal effort. Self-administered questionnaires, case studies, culture-focused interviews, and pro and con debates are just a few of the wide range of activities you can use to enrich the classroom.
Download or read book The Inland Sea written by Donald Richie and published by Stone Bridge Press. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An elegiac prose celebration . . . a classic in its genre."—Publishers Weekly In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished. Included are the twenty black and white photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa that accompanied the original 1971 edition. Donald Richie (1924–2013) was an internationally recognized expert on Japanese culture and film. Yoichi Midorikawa (1915–2001) was one of Japan's foremost nature photographers.
Download or read book Sensational Knowledge written by Tomie Hahn and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DVD contains: Examples of performances.
Download or read book The Blue Zones of Happiness Secrets of the World s Happiest Places written by Dan Buettner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this inspiring book, Buettner offers game-changing tools for setting up your life to be the happiest it can be. In these illuminating pages, you'll: Meet the world's Happiness All-Stars--inspiring individuals born in places around the world that nurture happiness as well as Americans boosting well-being in their own communities. Discover how the three strands of happiness -- joy, purpose, and satisfaction -- weave together in different ways to make Denmark, Costa Rica, and Singapore some of the world's happiest places. Use the Blue Zones Happiness Test to pinpoint areas in your life where change could bring more happiness--and then find practical steps to make those changes. Learn the Top 10 ways to create happiness, as revealed by a panel of the world's leading experts convened specifically for this project
Download or read book Turning Japanese written by David Mura and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2005-11-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1984, David Mura, a third-generation Japanese-American, was awarded a writing grant to live in Japan. After years of ignoring his ethnic heritage, Mura, with his wife (an American), embarked on a trip that profoundly changed his life. Turning Japanese chronicles his quest for self-knowledge and racial identity.
Download or read book Precarious Japan written by Anne Allison and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of irregular labor, nagging recession, nuclear contamination, and a shrinking population, Japan is facing precarious times. How the Japanese experience insecurity in their daily and social lives is the subject of Precarious Japan. Tacking between the structural conditions of socioeconomic life and the ways people are making do, or not, Anne Allison chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging. Until the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in 1991, lifelong employment and a secure income were within reach of most Japanese men, enabling them to maintain their families in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, as fewer and fewer people are able to find full-time work, hope turns to hopelessness and security gives way to a pervasive unease. Yet some Japanese are getting by, partly by reconceiving notions of home, family, and togetherness.
