Download or read book Making Common Sense of Japan written by Steven R. Reed and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common misconceptions about Japan begin with the notion that it is a "small" country (it's actually lager than Great Britain, Germany or Italy) and end with pronouncements that the Japanese think differently and have different values-they do things differently because that's the way they are. Steven Reed takes on the task of demystifying Japanese culture and behavior. Through examples that are familiar to an American audience and his own personal encounters with the Japanese, he argues that the apparent oddity of Japanese behavior flows quite naturally from certain objective conditions that are different from those in the United States. Mystical allegations about national character are less useful for understanding a foreign culture than a close look at specific situations and conditions. Two aspects of the Japanese economy have particularly baffled Americans: that Japanese workers have "permanent employment" and that the Japanese government cooperates with big business. Reed explains these phenomena in common sense terms. He shows how they developed historically, why they continue, and why they helped produce economic growth. He concludes that these practices are not as different from what happens in the United States as they may appear.

Download or read book Gone Fishin written by Jay Rubin and published by Kodansha Amer Incorporated. This book was released on 1992 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 An Introduction to Japanese Society written by Yoshio Sugimoto and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-22 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for students of Japanese society, An Introduction to Japanese Society now enters its third edition. Here, internationally renowned scholar, Yoshio Sugimoto, writes a sophisticated, yet highly readable and lucid text, using both English and Japanese sources to update and expand upon his original narrative. The book challenges the traditional notion that Japan comprises a uniform culture, and draws attention to its subcultural diversity and class competition. Covering all aspects of Japanese society, it includes chapters on class, geographical and generational variation, work, education, gender, minorities, popular culture and the establishment. This new edition features sections on: Japan's cultural capitalism; the decline of the conventional Japanese management model; the rise of the 'socially divided society' thesis; changes of government; the spread of manga, animation and Japan's popular culture overseas; and the expansion of civil society in Japan.

Download or read book Commonsense Constructivism or the Making of World Affairs written by Ralph Pettman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-29 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully accessible to students and scholars alike, this engaging book introduces the constructivist approach to understanding world affairs. In a highly readable and witty way, it shows how people and their social relations are the basis for everything around us -- International Relations included.

Download or read book Japanese Society Since 1945 written by Edward R. Beauchamp and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1998 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume II of a six-volume study of the history of contemporary Japan. Written by leading academicians, 20 essays cover topics including changes and continuities in Japan's culture, similarities and differences in Japanese and American life, the media and its role, the problem of the "graying" of Japanese society, the issue of long-term care and the very un-Japanese idea of nursing homes for the elderly, the relationship between marriage and names, mothers and children, the resolution of disputes, popular culture and sex roles, the transition from Hirohito's six decades of rule to that of a younger and more modern leader, and current social issues such as homelessness, child abuse, and juvenile crime.

Download or read book Making Common Sense Common Practice written by Victor R. Buzzotta and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1997-09-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The business world today is full of buzzwords such as empowerment, teamwork, and continuous improvement. In a desperate attempt to get a jump on the competition, many business leaders are so busy searching for the "next big idea" that something important is being overlooked-common sense! Making Common Sense Common Practice tells you how to get full use of the most powerful management tool around-your own common sense. Learn how to trust yourself when it comes to making leadership decisions and sound judgments. Learn how to take tension that sidetracks high performance and turn it into an energizing, creative force. Learn how to use what you already know! Using five common sense techniques, you will discover how to lead your people to build a high-performance organization. Grounded on the common sense principle that manager-leaders are regulators of tension in the workplace, Making Common Sense Common Practice discusses pragmatic actions that raise and lower tension, keeping it in the constructive, energizing range. These actions are woven into a step-by-step program that result in optimal performance for your organization.

Download or read book Beyond Common Sense Sexuality And Gender In Contemporary Japan written by Wim Lunsing and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2001. This volume is based on the author's visit to Japan in Summer 1986 on his findings about some of the questions he was asked whilst there. He was 25 and these questions centred around asking if he was married or had a girlfriend, when in his homeland of the Netherlands he openly identified as gay. This research is an investigation of how gay and lesbian people, women's and men's liberationaists, singles and other people, such as transsexuals, transvestites and hermaphrodites, whose ideas, feelings or lifestyles are at variance with Japanese constructions of marriage and inherently the construction of life, live in Japan.

Download or read book Race and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective written by Georgia A. Persons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contradictory forces are at play at the close of the twentieth century. There is a growing closeness of peoples fueled by old and new technologies of modern aviation, digital-based communications, new patterns of trade and commerce, and growing affluence of significant portions of the world's population. Television permits individuals around the world to learn about the cultures and lifestyles of peoples of physically distant lands. These developments give real meaning to the notion of a global village. Peoples of the world are growing closer in new and increasingly important ways. Nonetheless, there are disturbing signs of a growing awareness of ethnic differences in all parts of the world the United States included and a concomitant rise in ethnic-based conflicts, many of them extraordinarily violent in nature. Fear, resentment, intoler-ance, and mistreatment of the "other" abound in world news accounts. Not only does this phenomenon pose an interesting juxtaposition to the concept of the emergent glo-bal village, but its emergence in the post-cold war era internationally and the post-civil rights era in the United States raises significant and compelling questions. Why are such conflicts occurring now? How do analysts explain these developments? The essays in Race and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective lucidly explore some of the complexities of the persistence and re-emergence of race and ethnicity as major lines of divisiveness around the world. Contributors analyze manifestations of race-based movements for political empowerment in Europe and Latin America as well as racial intolerance in these same settings. Attention is also given to the conceptual complexi-ties of multidimensional and shared cultural roots of the overlapping phenomena of ethnicity, nationalism, identity, and ideology. The book greatly informs discussions of race and ethnicity in the international context and provides an interesting perspective against which to view America's changing problem of race. Race and Ethnicity in Com-parative Perspective is a timely, thought-provoking volume that will be of immense value to ethnic studies specialists, African American studies scholars, political scientists, his-torians, and sociologists.

Download or read book Education and Training in Japan written by Thomas P. Rohlen and published by Taylor & Francis US. This book was released on 1998 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection, written by Japanese and foreign scholars, represents an inclusive cross-section of the most important work in key areas of this field. Topics include: * the impact of Japanese education and training on Japan's economy and culture * the Japanese influence on the "East Asian approach" to education, in comparison with the educational systems of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong * Japan's promotion of "learning organizations" and "Knowledge workers" for the Information Age.

Download or read book Perfectly Japanese written by Merry White and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-09-02 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Japanese families in crisis? In this study, Merry Isaacs White looks back at two key moments of 'family making' in the past hundred years - the Meiji era and postwar period - to see how models for the Japanese family have been constructed.

Download or read book Just Enough written by Azby Brown and published by Stone Bridge Press, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the mindset of traditional Japanese society can guide our own efforts to lead a green lifestyle today. If we want to live sustainably, how should we feel about nature? About waste? About our forests and rivers? About food? Just Enough is a book of stories and sketches that give valuable insight into what it is like to live in a sustainable society by describing life in Japan some two hundred years ago, during the late Edo period, when cities and villages faced many of the same environmental challenges we do today and met them beautifully and inventively.

Download or read book Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan written by Herbert P. Bix and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority. Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled -- as it still does -- to come to terms with its past. Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader.

Download or read book The Xenophobe s Guide to the Japanese written by Sahoko Kaji and published by Oval Projects. This book was released on 2010-02-26 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to understanding the Japanese which goes beyond the etiquette to uncover the real nature of the people of the rising sun.

Download or read book A Place to Belong written by Cynthia Kadohata and published by Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Book of 2019 A Japanese-American family, reeling from their ill treatment in the Japanese internment camps, gives up their American citizenship to move back to Hiroshima, unaware of the devastation wreaked by the atomic bomb in this piercing look at the aftermath of World War II by Newbery Medalist Cynthia Kadohata. World War II has ended, but while America has won the war, twelve-year-old Hanako feels lost. To her, the world, and her world, seems irrevocably broken. America, the only home she’s ever known, imprisoned then rejected her and her family—and thousands of other innocent Americans—because of their Japanese heritage, because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Japan, the country they’ve been forced to move to, the country they hope will be the family’s saving grace, where they were supposed to start new and better lives, is in shambles because America dropped bombs of their own—one on Hiroshima unlike any other in history. And Hanako’s grandparents live in a small village just outside the ravaged city. The country is starving, the black markets run rampant, and countless orphans beg for food on the streets, but how can Hanako help them when there is not even enough food for her own brother? Hanako feels she could crack under the pressure, but just because something is broken doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. Cracks can make room for gold, her grandfather explains when he tells her about the tradition of kintsukuroi—fixing broken objects with gold lacquer, making them stronger and more beautiful than ever. As she struggles to adjust to find her place in a new world, Hanako will find that the gold can come in many forms, and family may be hers.

Download or read book Coffee Life in Japan written by Merry White and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book—part ethnography, part memoir—traces Japan’s vibrant café society over one hundred and thirty years. Merry White traces Japan’s coffee craze from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, to the present day, as uniquely Japanese ways with coffee surface in Europe and America. White’s book takes up themes as diverse as gender, privacy, perfectionism, and urbanism. She shows how coffee and coffee spaces have been central to the formation of Japanese notions about the uses of public space, social change, modernity, and pleasure. White describes how the café in Japan, from its start in 1888, has been a place to encounter new ideas and experiments in thought, behavior, sexuality , dress, and taste. It is where a person can be socially, artistically, or philosophically engaged or politically vocal. It is also, importantly, an urban oasis, where one can be private in public.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan written by William D. Hoover and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan is a mix of the old and the new, traditional and modern, and old fashion and innovative. It has traveled the road to a modern destination without totally losing sight of its traditions and values. Although some in Japan lament the passing of old ways, Japan has held on to a reasonable amount of its traditions and values. This is easier to find in its arts and crafts and its literature and films as well as in its social habits. This book will introduce the broad sweep of people, events, and trends, including the successes and failures, of postwar Japan. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Japan.