Download or read book The Strong and the Weak in Japanese Literature written by Fuminobu Murakami and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses texts from classical to modern Japanese literature to examine concepts of 'respect for the strong', as a notion of an evolutionary society, and 'sympathy for the weak', as a notion of a non-violent and changeless egalitarian society. The term strong refers not just to those with strength and power. It also includes other ideal attributes such as beauty, youth and goodness. Similarly, the term weak implies not only the weak and infirm, but also the disadvantaged, the indecent, the unsophisticated and those generally shunned by society. The former are associated not only with the power of life, competition, evolution, progress, development, ability, effectiveness, efficiency, individuality, the future, hope and romance, but also with violence, fighting, bullying, discrimination and sacrifice. The latter, in contrast, invoke notions of peace, egalitarianism, anti-discrimination and welfare, as well as stagnation, retreat, retrogression, degeneration and the decline of vital powers. By using these two concepts Murakami skillfully weaves a narrative that is part literary criticism, part social commentary. As such the book will be of huge interest to not only scholars and students of Japanese literature, but also those of Japanese society and culture.

Download or read book Japanese Whaling written by Arne Kalland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives a social anthropological account of whaling culture in Japan. When originally published this was the first comprehensive account in English of the history of Japanese whaling, showing how it has given rise to a particular culture. The volume discusses what happens when that culture is threatened. At the same time as explaining the work organization of those involved in whaling, the role of whaling companies in local and national economies, and the role of the whale in the establishment and maintenance of local community identity (ritual, food, gift-giving), the authors address the wider political and so-called "environmental" issues surrounding whaling in general, and Japanese whaling in particular.

Download or read book Fabricating Consumers written by Andrew Gordon and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its early days of mass production in the 1850s, the sewing machine has been intricately connected with the global development of capitalism. Andrew Gordon traces the machine’s remarkable journey into and throughout Japan, where it not only transformed manners of dress, but also helped change patterns of daily life, class structure, and the role of women. As he explores the selling, buying, and use of the sewing machine in the early to mid-twentieth century, Gordon finds that its history is a lens through which we can examine the modern transformation of daily life in Japan. Both as a tool of production and as an object of consumer desire, the sewing machine is entwined with the emergence and ascendance of the middle class, of the female consumer, and of the professional home manager as defining elements of Japanese modernity.

Download or read book Deus in Machina written by Jeremy Stolow and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume explore how two domains of human experience and action—religion and technology—are implicated in each other. Contrary to commonsense understandings of both religion (as an “otherworldly” orientation) and technology (as the name for tools, techniques, and expert knowledges oriented to “this” world), the contributors to this volume challenge the grounds on which this division has been erected in the first place. What sorts of things come to light when one allows religion and technology to mingle freely? In an effort to answer that question, Deus in Machina embarks upon an interdisciplinary voyage across diverse traditions and contexts where religion and technology meet: from the design of clocks in medieval Christian Europe, to the healing power of prayer in premodern Buddhist Japan, to 19th-century Spiritualist devices for communicating with the dead, to Islamic debates about kidney dialysis in contemporary Egypt, to the work of disability activists using documentary film to reimagine Jewish kinship, to the representation of Haitian Vodou on the Internet, among other case studies. Combining rich historical and ethnographic detail with extended theoretical reflection, Deus in Machina outlines new directions for the study of religion and/as technology that will resonate across the human sciences, including religious studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, history, anthropology, and philosophy.

Download or read book The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order 1920 1946 written by Harumi Goto-Shibata and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-grounded on abundant Japanese language sources which have been underused, this book uncovers the League of Nations’ works in East Asia in the inter-war period. By researching the field of social and other technical issues, namely, the trade in narcotics, the trafficking of women and the work in terms of improving health provision and providing economic advice to Nationalist China, it not only examines their long-term impacts on the international relations in the region but also argues that the League’s works challenged the existing imperial order of East and Southeast Asia. The book offers a key read for academics and students of international history and international relations, and others studying Japan or East Asia in the twentieth century.

Download or read book The International History of East Asia 1900 1968 written by Antony Best and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-18 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a broad account of the international history of East Asia from 1900 to 1968 - a subject that is essential to any understanding of the modern epoch. Whereas much of the scholarship on this subject has focused purely on the immediate origins and consequences of violent events such as wars and revolutions, this book demonstrates the importance of also considering other forces such as ideology, trade and cultural images that have helped shape East Asian international history. It analyses how the development of the region was influenced by ideological competition and ‘orientalism’, by both multilateral and unilateral efforts to instil order, and by the changing nature of international trade. It considers a number of important topics such as the concept of the ‘open door’; the rise and influence of progressive internationalism in the forum of the League of Nations; the development of anti-colonial nationalism and anti-Western internationalism in the shape of pan-Asianism; and the onset of the Cold War. It also includes detailed case studies of subjects including the administration of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service; the international effort to regulate the trade in opium; and the significance of intra-Asian trade. Overall, this book constitutes an impressive account of the international history of East Asia, and is an important contribution to the interpretive study of this crucial period of history.

Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies written by James D Babb and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A welcome addition to any reading list for those interested in contemporary Japanese society. - Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Society, University of Oxford "I know no better book for an accessible and up-to-date introduction to this complex subject than The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japan Studies." - Hiroko Takeda, Associate Professor, Organization for Global Japanese Studies, University of Tokyo "Pioneering and nuanced in analysis, yet highly accessible and engaging in style." - Yoshio Sugimoto, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies includes outstanding contributions from a diverse group of leading academics from across the globe. This volume is designed to serve as a major interdisciplinary reference work and a seminal text, both rigorous and accessible, to assist students and scholars in understanding one of the major nations of the world. James D. Babb is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University.

Download or read book Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons written by Haruo Shirane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media. 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. Shirane discusses textual, cultivated, material, performative, and gastronomic representations of nature. He reveals how this kind of 'secondary nature, ' which flourished in Japan's urban environment, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment when it began to recede from view. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane also clarifies the use of natural and seasonal topics as well as the changes in their cultural associations and functions across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world."--Back cover.

Download or read book Japanese Language written by Haruhiko Kindaichi and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the structure, history and evolution of the Japanese language. The Japanese Language is a classic study of one of the world's most widely used but least understood languages. Emphasizing the richness and complexity of Japanese as well as its limitations, this fine book provides a lively discussion about the uniqueness of the Japanese language. The relationship of Japanese to other languages is not well understood even by native speakers, and Professor Kindaichi sets out to define it. He concludes that Japanese is indeed only remotely related to other world languages although it shares many features in common with the languages of mainland Asia. Japanese shares with those languages a rich and detailed vocabulary for natural phenomena and an unusually complex and accurate way of expressing social relationships. Moreover, its capability to absorb innovations from abroad easily matches or exceeds that of English or German. The author, after briefly discussing the unique isolation of the Japanese language, moves on to consider the varieties of ordinary speech--dialects, jargon, sex--and role-based distinctions, and the difference between informal, formal, and literary language. He then examines the structure of Japanese pronunciations, its rhythm, and accent. The longest section of the book is devoted to the variety of the vocabulary, what can and cannot be said in Japanese. Readers who are just beginning their own study of Japanese will find this section especially fascinating, for each point is backed by examples from literature and everyday speech. Kindaichi also investigates the so-called vagueness of Japanese and traces it to its source-the unusual sentence order. This book includes: The highly debated origins of the Japanese language. Dialects, jargon, sex and role-based distinctions. Differences between informal, formal, and literary language. Structure, rhythm, and accent of pronunciation. What can and cannot be said in Japanese.

Download or read book Love Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation written by M. McLelland and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book in English to examine, through material in the popular press, the radical changes that took place in Japanese ideas about sex, romance and male-female relations in the wake of Japan's defeat and occupation by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War.

Download or read book Irregular Serials Annuals written by and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 1120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan written by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines how Japan’s increasingly multicultural population has impacted on the lives of minority children and their peers at school, and how schools are responding to this trend in terms of providing minority children with opportunities and preparing them for the adult society. The contributors focus on interactions between individuals and among groups representing diverse cultural backgrounds, and explore how such interactions are changing the landscape of education in increasingly multicultural Japan. Drawing on detailed micro-level studies of schooling, the chapters reveal the ways in which these individuals and groups (long-existing minority groups, newcomers, and the ‘mainstream Japanese’) interact, and the significant consequences of such interactions on learning at school and the system of education as a whole. While the educational achievement of children of varying minority groups continues to reflect their places in the social hierarchy, the boundaries of individual and group categories are negotiated by mutual interactions and remain fluid and situational. Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan provides important insights into bottom-up policy making processes and consciously brings together English and Japanese scholarship. As such, it will be an important resource for those interested in education and minority issues in Japan.

Download or read book Social Stratification in an Aging Society with Low Fertility written by Sawako Shirahase and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book empirically discusses stratification in contemporary Japanese society. It is unique for its examination of social inequality in relation to declining fertility and an aging population. Japan is the most aged society in the world: according to the Statistics Bureau of Japan, people who are aged 65 and above comprised 29.1% of the country’s total population in 2021. Meanwhile, the fertility rate has continuously declined since the mid-1970s. Japan experienced a dramatic change in its demographic structure in a short period of time. Such fast change could be a major factor that generated social stratification. In her industrialization, Japan was thought to share a pattern of social stratification similar to that of developed European and North American countries but with a low degree of socio-economic inequality and a high degree of homogeneity. There is no clear support for this description of Japan, although the country does share a pattern and degree of social stratification similar to that observed in Europe and North America. The social stratification theory has been developed in close relationship to the labor market; however, it is necessary to further examine the social stratification of very aged societies in which a substantial number of the population—namely, retired persons—no longer have any ties to the labor market. In this book, the contributors explore the pattern of social stratification at three life stages: young, middle-aged, and elderly. Included are discussions of various aspects of stratification such as education, work, wealth, marriage, family, gender, generation, and social attitudes.

Download or read book The Making of a New Rural Order in South China written by Joseph P. McDermott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In examining the key merchant group in late imperial China this book provides a framework for understanding China's path to modernity.

Download or read book Language Life in Japan written by Patrick Heinrich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its monolingual self-image, Japan is multilingual and growing more so due to indigenous minority language revitalization and as an effect of migration. Besides Japan's autochthonous languages such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, there are more than 75,000 immigrant children in the Japanese public education system alone who came to Japan in the 1980s and who speak more than a hundred different languages. Added to this growing linguistic diversity, the importance of English as the language of international communication in business and science especially is hotly debated. This book analyses how this linguistic diversity, and indeed recognition of this phenomenon, presents a wide range of sociolinguistic challenges and opportunities in fundamental institutions such as schools, in cultural patterns and in social behaviours and attitudes. This topic is an important one as Japan fights to re-establish itself in the new world order and will be of interest to all those who are concerned language change, language versus dialect, the effect of modern technology on language usage, and the way national and social problems are always reflected through the prism of language.

Download or read book The Politics of Chinese Medicine Under Mongol Rule written by Reiko Shinno and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the rule of the descendants of Chinggis Khan (1167-1227), China saw the development of a new culture in which medical practice came to be considered a highly respected occupation for elite men. During this period, further major steps were also taken towards the codification of medical knowledge and promotion of physicians’ social status. This book traces the history of the politics, institutions, and culture of medicine of China under Mongol rule, through the eyes of a successful South Chinese official Yuan Jue (1266-1327). As the first comprehensive monograph on history of medicine in China under the Mongols, it argues that this period was a separate moment in Chinese history, when a configuration of power different from that of previous and succeeding periods created its own medical culture. The Politics of Chinese Medicine under Mongol Rule emphasizes the impact of the political and institutional changes caused by the Mongols and their collaborators on the social and cultural history of medicine, which culminated in the medical theory of Zhu Zhenheng (1282–1358), still influential in East Asian medicine. Using a variety of Chinese-language sources including gazetteers, legal texts, biographies, poems, and medical texts, it analyses the roles of the Mongols and West and Central Asians as cultural brokers and also as unifiers of China. Further, it views North and South Chinese elites as agents of historical change rather than as victims of Mongol oppression. Underlining the complexity of the history of China under the Mongols and the significance of time and geography for the study of this history, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese medical history, Chinese social and cultural history, and medieval global history.

Download or read book Annual Housing Survey United States and Regions written by United States. Bureau of the Census and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: pt.A. General housing characteristics -- pt.B. Indicators of housing and neighborhood quality -- pt.C. Financial characteristics of the housing inventory -- pt.D. Housing characteristics of recent movers -- pt.E. Urban and rural housing characteristics.