Download or read book The Making of Modern Japan written by Marius B. Jansen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 933 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magisterial in vision, sweeping in scope, this monumental work presents a seamless account of Japanese society during the modern era, from 1600 to the present. A distillation of more than fifty years’ engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience. Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan’s ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture. Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due. The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world’s most compelling transformations.

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 Making of Modern Japan written by Kenneth B. Pyle and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing the dynamics of historical change, the text discusses the major forces in Japan's development from 1600 to the present day, including samurai officialdom, industrialization, militarism, and social values.

Download or read book Music in the Making of Modern Japan written by Kei Hibino and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the notion of “affective media” within and across different arts in Japan, with a primary focus on music, whether as standalone product or connected to other genres such as theatre and photography. The volume explores the Japanese reception of this “affective media”, its transformation and subsequent cultural flow. Moving from a discussion of early encounters with the West through Jesuits and others, the contributors primarily consider the role of music in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. With ten original chapters, the volume covers a wealth of themes, from education, koto music, guitar making, avant-garde recorder works, musicals and rock photography, to interviews with contemporary performers in jazz, modern rock and J-pop. Innovative and fascinating, the book provides rich new insights and material to all those interested in Japanese musical culture.

Download or read book Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan written by Brij Tankha and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of Kita Ikki, one of Japan’s influential pre-war idealogues, focuses on the twin poles of nationalism and socialism that inform his three principal works, located always in the context of the dominance of Western imperialism at that time. The second half of the book contains the first complete English translation of The Fundamental Principles for the Reorganization of Japan.

Download or read book The Emergence of Modern Japan written by Janet Hunter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main emphasis of this book is upon political, social and economic developments, as conditioned by Japan's interaction with the outside world, the advance of industrialisation and the emergence of the Japanese nation state. Unlike previous textbooks on the history of modern Japan, Janet Hunter's book adopts a thematic approach which makes the period much more accessible for readers who wish to pursue their particular interests throughout the period. Moreover, it will also establish a greater awareness of the cultural and institutional continuities which are crucial to any proper understanding of modern Japan.

Download or read book Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan written by Daniel V. Botsman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The kinds of punishment used in a society have long been considered an important criterion in judging whether a society is civilized or barbaric, advanced or backward, modern or premodern. Focusing on Japan, and the dramatic revolution in punishments that occurred after the Meiji Restoration, Daniel Botsman asks how such distinctions have affected our understanding of the past and contributed, in turn, to the proliferation of new kinds of barbarity in the modern world. While there is no denying the ferocity of many of the penal practices in use during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), this book begins by showing that these formed part of a sophisticated system of order that did have its limits. Botsman then demonstrates that although significant innovations occurred later in the period, they did not fit smoothly into the "modernization" process. Instead, he argues, the Western powers forced a break with the past by using the specter of Oriental barbarism to justify their own aggressive expansion into East Asia. The ensuing changes were not simply imposed from outside, however. The Meiji regime soon realized that the modern prison could serve not only as a symbol of Japan's international progress but also as a powerful domestic tool. The first English-language study of the history of punishment in Japan, the book concludes by examining how modern ideas about progress and civilization shaped penal practices in Japan's own colonial empire.

Download or read book The Taming of the Samurai written by Eiko Ikegami and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Japan offers us a view of a highly developed society with its own internal logic. Eiko Ikegami makes this logic accessible to us through a sweeping investigation into the roots of Japanese organizational structures. She accomplishes this by focusing on the diverse roles that the samurai have played in Japanese history. From their rise in ancient Japan, through their dominance as warrior lords in the medieval period, and their subsequent transformation to quasi-bureaucrats at the beginning of the Tokugawa era, the samurai held center stage in Japan until their abolishment after the opening up of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. This book demonstrates how Japan’s so-called harmonious collective culture is paradoxically connected with a history of conflict. Ikegami contends that contemporary Japanese culture is based upon two remarkably complementary ingredients, honorable competition and honorable collaboration. The historical roots of this situation can be found in the process of state formation, along very different lines from that seen in Europe at around the same time. The solution that emerged out of the turbulent beginnings of the Tokugawa state was a transformation of the samurai into a hereditary class of vassal-bureaucrats, a solution that would have many unexpected ramifications for subsequent centuries. Ikegami’s approach, while sociological, draws on anthropological and historical methods to provide an answer to the question of how the Japanese managed to achieve modernity without traveling the route taken by Western countries. The result is a work of enormous depth and sensitivity that will facilitate a better understanding of, and appreciation for, Japanese society.

Download or read book New Times in Modern Japan written by Stefan Tanaka and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Times in Modern Japan concerns the transformation of time--the reckoning of time--during Japan's Meiji period, specifically from around 1870 to 1900. Time literally changed as the archipelago synchronized with the Western imperialists' reckoning of time. The solar calendar and clock became standard timekeeping devices, and society adapted to the abstractions inherent in modern notions of time. This set off a cascade of changes that completely reconfigured how humans interacted with each other and with their environment--a process whose analysis carries implications for other non-Western societies as well. By examining topics ranging from geology, ghosts, childhood, art history, and architecture to nature as a whole, Stefan Tanaka explores how changing conceptions of time destabilized inherited knowledge and practices and ultimately facilitated the reconfiguration of the archipelago's heterogeneous communities into the liberal-capitalist nation-state, Japan. However, this revolutionary transformation--where, in the words of Lewis Mumford, "the clock, not the steam engine," is the key mechanism of the industrial age--has received little more than a footnote in the history of Japan. This book's innovative focus on time not only shifts attention away from debates about the failure (or success) of "modernization" toward how individuals interact with the overlay of abstract concepts upon their lives; it also illuminates the roles of history as discourse and as practice in this reconfiguration of society. In doing so, it will influence discussions about modernity well beyond the borders of Japan.

Download or read book Embodying Difference written by Timothy D. Amos and published by . This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in New Delhi by Navayana Publishing.

Download or read book Beriberi in Modern Japan written by Alexander R. Bay and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the medical and scientific debate about the etiology of the disease as it played out between diet theorists and contagionists from 1880 to 1940. In modern Japan, beriberi (or thiamin deficiency) became a public health problem that cut across all social boundaries, afflicting even the Meiji Emperor. During an age of empire building for the Japanese nation, incidence rates in the military ranged from 30 percent in peacetime to 90 percent during war. Doctors and public health officials called beriberi a "national disease" because it festered within the bodies of the people and threatened the health ofthe empire. Nevertheless, they could not agree over what caused the disease, attributing it to a diet deficiency or a microbe. In Beriberi in Modern Japan, Alexander R. Bay examines the debates over the etiologyof this "national disease" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Etiological consensus came after World War I, but the struggle at the national level to direct beriberi prevention continued, peaking during wartime mobilization. War served as the context within which scientific knowledge of beriberi and its prevention was made. The story of beriberi research is not simply about the march toward the inevitable discovery of "the beriberi vitamin," but rather the history of the role of medicine in state-making and empire-building in modern Japan. Alexander Bay is assistant professor of history at Chapman University.

Download or read book Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan written by Christine Guth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Crafts were central to daily life in early modern Japan. They were powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and identity, and how and from what materials they were made were matters of serious concern among all classes of society. In Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan, Christine M. E. Guth examines the network of forces--both material and immaterial--that supported Japan's rich, diverse, and aesthetically sophisticated artifactual culture between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Exploring the institutions, modes of thought, and reciprocal relationships among people, materials, and tools, she draws particular attention to the role of women in crafts, embodied knowledge, and the special place of lacquer as a medium. By examining the ways and values of making that transcend specific media and practices, Guth illuminates the 'craft culture' of early modern Japan"--

Download or read book Everyday Things in Premodern Japan written by Susan B. Hanley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan was the only non-Western nation to industrialize before 1900 and its leap into the modern era has stimulated vigorous debates among historians and social scientists. In an innovative discussion that posits the importance of physical well-being as a key indicator of living standards, Susan B. Hanley considers daily life in the three centuries leading up to the modern era in Japan. She concludes that people lived much better than has been previously understood—at levels equal or superior to their Western contemporaries. She goes on to illustrate how this high level of physical well-being had important consequences for Japan's ability to industrialize rapidly and for the comparatively smooth transition to a modern, industrial society. While others have used income levels to conclude that the Japanese household was relatively poor in those centuries, Hanley examines the material culture—food, sanitation, housing, and transportation. How did ordinary people conserve the limited resources available in this small island country? What foods made up the daily diet and how were they prepared? How were human wastes disposed of? How long did people live? Hanley answers all these questions and more in an accessible style and with frequent comparisons with Western lifestyles. Her methods allow for cross-cultural comparisons between Japan and the West as well as Japan and the rest of Asia. They will be useful to anyone interested in the effects of modernization on daily life.

Download or read book Early Modern Japan written by Conrad Totman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995-08 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thoughtfully organized survey of Japan's early modern period (1568-1868) is a remarkable blend of political, economic, intellectual, literary, and cultural history. The only truly comprehensive study in English of the Tokugawa period, it also introduces a new ecological perspective, covering natural disasters, resource use, demographics, and river control.

Download or read book Designing Modern Japan written by Sarah Teasley and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-05-06 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at Japanese design weaving together the stories of people who shaped Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics. From cars to cameras, design from Japan is ubiquitous. So are perceptions of Japanese design, from calming, carefully crafted minimalism to avant-garde catwalk fashion, or the cute, Kawaii aesthetic populating Tokyo streets. But these portrayals overlook the creativity, generosity, and sheer hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining design industries in Japan. In Designing Modern Japan, Sarah Teasley deftly weaves together the personal stories of people who shaped and shape Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions, and geopolitics.. Key to her account is how design has been a strategy to help communities thrive during turbulent times, and for making life better along the way. Deeply researched and superbly illustrated, Designing Modern Japan appeals to a wide audience for Japanese design, history, and culture.

Download or read book The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism written by Sidney Xu Lu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.

Download or read book Yumeji Modern written by Nozomi Naoi and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hugely popular Japanese artist Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934) is an emblematic figure of Japan’s rapidly changing cultural milieu in the early twentieth century. His graphic works include leftist and antiwar illustrations in socialist bulletins, wrenching portrayals of Tokyo after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, and fashionable images of beautiful women—referred to as “Yumeji-style beauties”—in books and magazines that targeted a new demographic of young female consumers. Yumeji also played a key role in the reinvention of the woodblock medium. As his art and designs proliferated in Japan’s mass media, Yumeji became a recognizable brand. In the first full-length English-language study of Yumeji’s work, Nozomi Naoi examines the artist’s role in shaping modern Japanese identity. Addressing his output from the start of his career in 1905 to the 1920s, when his productivity peaked, Yumeji Modern introduces for the first time in English translation a substantial body of Yumeji’s texts, including diary entries, poetry, essays, and commentary, alongside his illustrations. Naoi situates Yumeji’s graphic art within the emerging media landscape from 1900s through the 1910s, when novel forms of reprographic communication helped create new spaces of visual culture and image circulation. Yumeji’s legacy and his present-day following speak to the broader, ongoing implications of his work with respect to commercial art, visual culture, and print media.