Download or read book Landscapes and Portraits Appreciations of Japanese Culture written by Donald Keene and published by Tokyo ; Palo Alto [Calif.] : Kodansha International Limited. This book was released on 1971 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Japanese Landscapes written by Cotton Mather and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the busy streets of Tokyo to the secluded shores of Kyushu, from the volcanoes of Hokkaido to the temples of Kyoto, the treasured landscapes of Japan are brought to life in this concise visual guide. Drawing upon years of observation, Cotton Mather, P.P. Karan, and Shigeru Iijima explore the complex interaction of culture, time, and space in the evolution of landscapes in Japan. The authors begin with a discussion of the landscape's general characteristics, including paucity of idle land, scarcity of level land, and its meticulous organization and immaculate nature. They then apply those characteristics to such favorite subjects as home gardens, sculpted plants, and flower arrangements, but also to more mundane matters such as roadside shoulders, utility lines, and walled urban areas. This unique blending of physical and social sciences with humanities perspectives offers a unified analysis of the Japanese landscape.
Download or read book Japanese Culture written by Paul Varley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly three decades Japanese Culture has garnered high praise as an accurate and well-written introduction to Japanese history and culture. This widely used undergraduate text is now available in a new edition. Thoroughly updated, the fourth edition includes expanded sections on numerous topics, among which are samurai values, Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony, Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, the story of the forty-seven ronin, Mito scholarship in the early nineteenth century, and mass culture and comics in contemporary times.
Download or read book Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts written by Thomas R. H. Havens and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-07-31 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radicals and Realists is the first book in any language to discuss Japan’s avant-garde artists, their work, and the historical environment in which they produced it during the two most creative decades of the twentieth century, the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the artists were radicals, rebelling against existing canons and established authority. Yet at the same time they were realists in choosing concrete materials, sounds, and themes from everyday life for their art and in gradually adopting tactics of protest or resistance through accommodation rather than confrontation. Whatever the means of expression, the production of art was never devoid of historical context or political implication. Focusing on the nonverbal genres of painting, sculpture, dance choreography, and music composition, this work shows that generational and political differences, not artistic doctrines, largely account for the divergent stances artists took vis-a-vis modernism, the international arts community, Japan’s ties to the United States, and the alliance of corporate and bureaucratic interests that solidified in Japan during the 1960s. After surveying censorship and arts policy during the American occupation of Japan (1945–1952), the narrative divides into two chronological sections dealing with the 1950s and 1960s, bisected by the rise of an artistic underground in Shinjuku and the security treaty crisis of May 1960. The first section treats Japanese artists who studied abroad as well as the vast and varied experiments in each of the nonverbal avant-garde arts that took place within Japan during the 1950s, after long years of artistic insularity and near-stasis throughout war and occupation. Chief among the intellectuals who stimulated experimentation were the art critic Takiguchi Shuzo, the painter Okamoto Taro, and the businessman-painter Yoshihara Jiro. The second section addresses the multifront assault on formalism (confusingly known as "anti-art") led by visual artists nationwide. Likewise, composers of both Western-style and contemporary Japanese-style music increasingly chose everyday themes from folk music and the premodern musical repertoire for their new presentations. Avant-garde print makers, sculptors, and choreographers similarly moved beyond the modern—and modernism—in their work. A later chapter examines the artistic apex of the postwar period: Osaka’s 1970 world exposition, where more avant-garde music, painting, sculpture, and dance were on display than at any other point in Japan’s history, before or since. Radicals and Realists is based on extensive archival research; numerous concerts, performances, and exhibits; and exclusive interviews with more than fifty leading choreographers, composers, painters, sculptors, and critics active during those two innovative decades. Its accessible prose and lucid analysis recommend it to a wide readership, including those interested in modern Japanese art and culture as well as the history of the postwar years.
Download or read book Currents in Japanese Culture written by Amy Vladeck Heinrich and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These twenty-nine original essays focuses on how cultural and literary genres and norms have developed in response to historical and cross-cultural influences.
Download or read book A History of Popular Culture in Japan written by E. Taylor Atkins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenon of 'Cool Japan' is one of the distinctive features of global popular culture of the millennial age. A History of Popular Culture in Japan provides the first historical and analytical overview of popular culture in Japan from its origins in the 17th century to the present day, using it to explore broader themes of conflict, power, identity and meaning in Japanese history. E. Taylor Atkins shows how Japan is one of the earliest sites for the development of mass-produced, market-oriented cultural products consumed by urban middle and working classes. The best-known traditional arts and culture of Japan- no theater, monochrome ink painting, court literature, poetry and indigenous music-inhabited a world distinct from that of urban commoners, who fashioned their own expressive forms and laid the groundwork for today's 'gross national cool.' Popular culture was pivotal in the rise of Japanese nationalism, imperialism, militarism, postwar democracy and economic development. Offering historiographical and analytical frameworks for understanding its subject, A History of Popular Culture in Japan synthesizes the latest scholarship from a variety of disciplines. It is a vital resource for students of Japanese cultural history wishing to gain a deeper understanding of Japan's contributions to global cultural heritage.
Download or read book Against Harmony written by James Mark Shields and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against Harmony traces the history of progressive and radical experiments in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice, from the mid-Meiji period through the early Showa. Perhaps the two best representations of progressive Buddhism during this time were the New Buddhist Fellowship (1899-1915) and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism (1931-1936), both non-sectarian, lay movements well-versed in both classical Buddhist texts and Western philosophy and religion. Their work effectively collapsed commonly held distinctions between religion, philosophy, ethics, politics, and economics. Unlike many others of their day, they did not regard the novel forces of modernization as problematic and disruptive, but as opportunities. James Mark Shields examines the intellectual genealogy and alternative visions of progressive and radical Buddhism in the decades leading up to the Pacific War. Exposing the variety in the conceptions and manifestations of progress, reform, and modernity in this period, he outlines their important implications for postwar and contemporary Buddhism in Japan and elsewhere.
Download or read book Japanese History Culture from Ancient to Modern Times written by John W. Dower and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mizoguchi and Japan written by Mark Le Fanu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a majority of filmgoers, the names most usually associated with classic Japanese cinema are those of Kurosawa and Ozu. Yet during the early 1950s, at the same time that Kurosawa was becoming known to the public through the release of classics like Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, another Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi, quietly came out with a trilogy of films - The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho the Bailiff - that are the equal of Kurosawa's in mastery, and which by any account rank among the greatest and most enduring masterpieces of world cinema. As a storyteller, Mizoguchi was drawn to the plight and oppression of women throughout the ages - it was, for him, the 'subject of subjects'. So in addition to the movies just mentioned, he is remembered for a string of masterly contemporary films that examined, with unprecedented candour and ferocity, the conditions of life in Japanese brothels and geisha houses. Yet, as well as being a moralist. Mizoguchi was a stylist. His films are considered by critics to be among the most beautiful ever made, from a purely pictorial point of view. Filmgoers who have responded enthusiastically in recent years to Chinese classics like Farewell My Concubine or to the colourful works of Zhang Yimou will be delighted to discover 'pre-echoes' of this cinema in such late films by this Japanese master as The Empress Yang Kwei Fei and Tales of the Taira Clan (both released in 1955) works in which colour, costume and decor are deployed with compelling refinement. Despite his extraordinary qualities as a film-maker, Mizoguchi and Japan is the first full -length study in English for over 20 years of a director whose work is as vibrant now as it ever was in its heyday, and whom the French film review Cahiers du Cinema recently hailed 'the greatest of all cineastes.' Mark Le Fanu's preface to the new ebook edition - https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/revised-mizoguchi-and-japan-preface.docx A Retrospective to the 2008 edition - https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/mizoguchi-and-japan-retrospect.doc
Download or read book Modern Japanese Diaries written by Donald Keene and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of journals written by Japanese men and women who journeyed to America, Europe, and China between 1860 and 1920. The diaries faithfully record personal views of the countries and their cultures and sentiments that range from delight to disillusionment.
Download or read book The Postwar Developments of Japanese Studies in the United States written by Helen Hardacre and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1998 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of twelve essays with useful bibliographies, in the fields of history, art, religion, literature, anthropology, political science, and law, documents the history of United States scholarship on Japan since 1945.
Download or read book Art of Japan written by Cleveland Museum of Art and published by Hudson Hills. This book was released on 2005 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cleveland Museum of Art has accumulated one of the premier collections of Japanese art in the West, and this publication brings together its best examples of Japanese art.
Download or read book Japan s Total Empire written by Louise Young and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of the empire Japan won and then lost in the Pacific War was Manchukuo, a puppet state created in Northeast China in 1932. Not unlike India for the British, Manchukuo was the crucible and symbol of empire for the Japanese. In this book, the first social and cultural history of Japan's construction of Manchuria, Louise Young studies how people at home imagined, experienced, and built the empire that so threatened the world.
Download or read book The Closed Hand written by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her book, The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature, Rebecca Riger Tsurumi captures the remarkable story behind the changing human landscape in Peru at the end of the nineteenth century when Japanese immigrants established what would become the second largest Japanese community in South America. She analyzes how non-Japanese Peruvian narrators unlock the unspoken attitudes and beliefs about the Japanese held by mainstream Peruvian society, as reflected in works written between 1966 and 2006. Tsurumi explores how these Peruvian literary giants, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Miguel Gutiérrez, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Carmen Ollé, Pilar Dughi, and Mario Bellatin, invented Japanese characters whose cultural differences fascinated and confounded their creators. She compares the outsider views of these Peruvian narrators with the insider perceptions of two Japanese Peruvian poets, José Watanabe and Doris Moromisato, who tap personal experiences and memories to create images that define their identities. The book begins with a brief sociohistorical overview of Japan and Peru, describing the conditions in both nations that resulted in Japanese immigration to Peru and concluding in contemporary times. Tsurumi traces the evolution of the terms "Orient" and "Japanese/Oriental" and the depiction of Asians in Modernista poetry and in later works by Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges. She analyzes the images of the Japanese portrayed in individual works of modern Peruvian narrative, comparing them with those created in Japanese Peruvian poetry. The book concludes with an appendix containing excerpts from Tsurumi's interviews and correspondence in Spanish with writers and poets in Lima and Mexico City.
Download or read book Frog in the Well written by Donald Keene and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frog in the Well is a vivid and revealing account of Watanabe Kazan, one of the most important intellectuals of the late Tokugawa period. From his impoverished upbringing to his tragic suicide in exile, Kazan's life and work reflected a turbulent period in Japan's history. He was a famous artist, a Confucian scholar, a student of Western culture, a samurai, and a critic of the shogunate who, nevertheless, felt compelled to kill himself for fear that he had caused his lord anxiety. During this period, a typical Japanese scholar or artist refused to acknowledge the outside world, much like a "frog in the well that knows nothing of the ocean," but Kazan actively sought out Western learning. He appreciated European civilization and bought every scrap of European art that was available in Japan. He became a painter to help his family out of poverty and, by employing the artistic techniques of the West, achieved great success with his realistic and stylistically advanced portraits. Although he remained a nationalist committed to the old ways, Kazan called on the shogunate to learn from the West or risk disaster. He strove to improve the agricultural and economic conditions of his province and reinforce its defenses, but his criticisms and warnings about possible coastal invasions ultimately led to his arrest and exile. Frog in the Well is the first full-length biography of Kazan in English, and, in telling his life's story, renowned scholar Donald Keene paints a fascinating portrait of the social and intellectual milieus of the late Tokugawa period. Richly illustrated with Kazan's paintings, Frog in the Well illuminates a life that is emblematic of the cultural crises affecting Japan in the years before revolution.
Download or read book Japan s Modern Myths written by Carol Gluck and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideology played a momentous role in modern Japanese history. Not only did the elite of imperial Japan (1890-1945) work hard to influence the people to "yield as the grasses before the wind," but historians of modern Japan later identified these efforts as one of the underlying pathologies of World War II. Available for the first time in paperback, this study examines how this ideology evolved. Carol Gluck argues that the process of formulating and communicating new national values was less consistent than is usually supposed. By immersing the reader in the talk and thought of the late Meiji period, Professor Gluck recreates the diversity of ideological discourse experienced by Japanese of the time. The result is a new interpretation of the views of politics and the nation in imperial Japan.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire written by Martin Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire offers the most comprehensive treatment of the causes, course, and consequences of the collapse of empires in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors convey the global reach of decolonization, analysing the ways in which European, Asian, and African empires disintegrated over the past century.
