Download or read book Japanese Fairy Tales written by Yei Theodora Ozaki and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Japanese fairy tales is the outcome of a suggestion made to me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folk-lore.... In telling these stories in English I have followed my fancy in adding such touches of local color or description as they seemed to need or as pleased me, and in one or two instances I have gathered in an incident from another version. At all times, among my friends, both young and old, English or American, I have always found eager listeners to the beautiful legends and fairy tales of Japan, and in telling them I have also found that they were still unknown to the vast majority...
Download or read book Japan Story written by Christopher Harding and published by Penguin Books Limited. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fresh and surprising account of Japan's culture from the 'opening up' of the country in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. 'How much I admired it, what a lot I learned from it and, above all, how very much I enjoyed it ... Masterly.' Neil MacGregor It is told through the eyes of people who greeted this change not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's modernizers and nationalists, but with resistance, conflict, distress. We encounter writers of dramas, ghost stories and crime novels where modernity itself is the tragedy, the ghoul and the bad guy; surrealist and avant-garde artists sketching their escape; rebel kamikaze pilots and the put-upon urban poor; hypnotists and gangsters; men in desperate search of the eternal feminine and feminists in search of something more than state-sanctioned subservience; Buddhists without morals; Marxist terror groups; couches full to bursting with the psychological fall-out of breakneck modernization. These people all sprang from the soil of modern Japan, but their personalities and projects failed to fit. They were 'dark blossoms': both East-West hybrids and home-grown varieties that wreathed, probed and sometimes penetrated the new structures of mainstream Japan.
Download or read book Tales of Old Japan written by Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Baron Redesdale and published by . This book was released on 1871 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Samurai written by Thomas Lockley and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of the first foreign-born samurai and his journey from Africa to Japan is “a readable, compassionate account of an extraordinary life” (The Washington Post). When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traveled much of the known world. Kidnapped as a child, he had ended up a servant and bodyguard to the head of the Jesuits in Asia, with whom he traversed India and China learning multiple languages as he went. His arrival in Kyoto, however, literally caused a riot. Most Japanese people had never seen an African man before, and many of them saw him as the embodiment of the black-skinned Buddha. Among those who were drawn to his presence was Lord Nobunaga, head of the most powerful clan in Japan, who made Yasuke a samurai in his court. Soon, he was learning the traditions of Japan’s martial arts and ascending the upper echelons of Japanese society. In the four hundred years since, Yasuke has been known in Japan largely as a legendary, perhaps mythical figure. Now African Samurai presents the never-before-told biography of this unique figure of the sixteenth century, one whose travels between countries and cultures offers a new perspective on race in world history and a vivid portrait of life in medieval Japan. “Fast-paced, action-packed writing. . . . A new and important biography and an incredibly moving study of medieval Japan and solid perspective on its unification. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Eminently readable. . . . a worthwhile and entertaining work.” —Publishers Weekly “A unique story of a unique man, and yet someone with whom we can all identify.” —Jack Weatherford, New York Times–bestselling author of Genghis Khan
Download or read book Brief History of Japan written by Jonathan Clements and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating history tells the story of the people of Japan, from ancient teenage priest-queens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two centuries in self-imposed seclusion. First revealed to Westerners in the chronicles of Marco Polo, Japan was a legendary faraway land defended by a fearsome Kamikaze storm and ruled by a divine sovereign. It was the terminus of the Silk Road, the furthest end of the known world, a fertile source of inspiration for European artists, and an enduring symbol of the mysterious East. In recent times, it has become a powerhouse of global industry, a nexus of popular culture, and a harbinger of post-industrial decline. With intelligence and wit, author Jonathan Clements blends documentary and storytelling styles to connect the past, present and future of Japan, and in broad yet detailed strokes reveals a country of paradoxes: a modern nation steeped in ancient traditions; a democracy with an emperor as head of state; a famously safe society built on 108 volcanoes resting on the world's most active earthquake zone; a fast-paced urban and technologically advanced country whose land consists predominantly of mountains and forests. Among the chapters in this Japanese history book are: The Way of the Gods: Prehistoric and Mythical Japan A Game of Thrones: Minamoto vs. Taira Time Warp: 200 Years of Isolation The Stench of Butter: Restoration and Modernization The New Breed: The Japanese Miracle
Download or read book Tales of Old Edo Kaiki written by Robert Weinberg and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan has a long history of weird and supernatural literature, but it has been introduced into English only haphazardly until now. The first volume of a 3-volume anthology covering over two centuries of kaiki literature, including both short stories and manga, from Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari of 1776 to Kyogoku Natsuhiko's modern interpretations of popular tales. Selected and with commentary by Higashi Masao, a recognized researcher and author in the field, the series systemizes and introduces the scope of the field and helps establish it as a genre of its own. This first volume presents a variety of work focusing on pre-modern Japan, and includes one manga.
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 Naomi written by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and published by ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع. This book was released on 2024-03-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious story of one man’s obsession and a brilliant reckoning of a nation’s cultural confusion—from a master Japanese novelist. When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the naïve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.
Download or read book Kingdom of the Sick written by Susan L. Burns and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-05-31 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work, Susan L. Burns examines the history of leprosy in Japan from medieval times until the present. At the center of Kingdom of the Sick is the rise of Japan’s system of national leprosy sanitaria, which today continue to house more than 1,500 former patients, many of whom have spent five or more decades within them. Burns argues that long before the modern Japanese government began to define a policy toward leprosy, the disease was already profoundly marked by ethical and political concerns and associated with sin, pollution, heredity, and outcast status. Beginning in the 1870s, new anxieties about race and civilization that emanated from a variety of civic actors, including journalists, doctors, patent medicine producers, and Christian missionaries transformed leprosy into a national issue. After 1900, a clamor of voices called for the quarantine of all sufferers of the disease, and in the decades that followed bureaucrats, politicians, physicians, journalists, local communities, and leprosy sufferers themselves grappled with the place of the biologically vulnerable within the body politic. At stake in this “citizenship project” were still evolving conceptions of individual rights, government responsibility for social welfare, and the delicate balance between care and control. Refusing to treat leprosy patients as simply victims of state power, Burns recovers their voices in the debates that surrounded the most controversial aspects of sanitarium policy, including the use of sterilization, segregation, and the continuation of confinement long after leprosy had become a curable disease. Richly documented with both visual and textual sources and interweaving medical, political, social, and cultural history, Kingdom of the Sick tells an important story for readers interested in Japan, the history of medicine and public health, social welfare, gender and sexuality, and human rights.
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 Tales of Japan written by Chronicle Books and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A goblin with no body and a monster with no face. A resourceful samurai and a faithful daughter. A spirit of the moon and a dragon king. This collection of 15 traditional Japanese folktales transports readers to a time of adventure and enchantment. Drawn from the works of folklorists Lafcadio Hearn and Yei Theodora Ozaki, these tales are by turns terrifying, exhilarating, and poetic. • Striking illustrations by contemporary Japanese artist Kotaro Chiba • Special gift edition features an embossed, textured case with metallic gold ink, and a satin ribbon page marker • Part of the popular Tales series, featuring Nordic Tales, Celtic Tales, Tales of India, and Tales of East Africa Fans of Ghostly Tales, and Japanese Notebooks will love this book. This book is ideal for: • Fans of fairytales, folklore, ghost stories, Greek mythology, roman mythology, Chinese mythology, and Celtic mythology • Anyone interested in Japan's history books and culture studies • People of Japanese heritage • Collectors of illustrated classics
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Japan written by John Whitney Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Survey of the historical events and developments in medieval Japan's polity, economy, society and culture.
Download or read book Japanese Stories for Language Learners written by Anne McNulty and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great story can lead a reader on a journey of discovery—especially if it's presented in two languages! Beautifully illustrated in a traditional style, Japanese Stories for Language Learners offers five compelling stories with English and Japanese language versions appearing on facing pages. Taking learners on an exciting cultural and linguistic journey, each story is followed by detailed translator's notes, Japanese vocabulary lists, and grammar points along with a set of discussion questions and exercises. The first two stories are very famous traditional Japanese folktales: Urashima Taro (Tale of a Fisherman) and Yuki Onna (The Snow Woman). These are followed by three short stories by notable 20th century authors: Kumo no Ito (The Spider's Thread) by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927) Oborekaketa Kyodai (The Siblings Who Almost Drowned) by Arishima Takeo (1878-1923) Serohiki no Goshu (Gauche the Cellist) by Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) Reading these stories in the original Japanese script--and hearing native-speakers read them aloud in the accompanying free audio recording--helps students at every level deepen their comprehension of the beauty and subtlety of the Japanese language. Learn Japanese the fun way—through the country's rich literary history.
Download or read book Fairy Tales of Old Japan written by William Elliot Griffis and published by . This book was released on 2008-10 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Elliot Griffis, D.D., L.H. D. (1843-1928) was an American orientalist, author and Congregational preacher. In September 1870 Griffis was invited to Japan for the purpose of organizing schools along Western lines. He prepared the New Japan Series of reading and spelling books and primers for Japanese students in the English language. He published 18 books on Japan and Japanese culture, wrote several hundred articles, and made numerous public lectures. It wasn t just Japan and the Orient he was interested in, in his lifetime Griffis travelled to Europe 11 times, mainly to the Netherlands. He was a member of the committee of the Boston Congregational Club to erect a Pilgrim memorial at Delfshaven, the Netherlands in 1909. In 1926 he returned to Japan to receive the Order of the Rising Sun. He died in 1928. His works include The Religions of Japan (1895), Charles Carleton Coffin (1898), Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks (1918) and Welsh Fairy Tales (1921).
Download or read book Legends of the Samurai written by Hiroaki Sato and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative history of Japan’s elite warrior class separates fact from myth as it chronicles centuries of samurai combat, culture, and legend. In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato examines the history of these medieval Japanese warriors, as well as the many long-standing myths that surround them. In doing so, he presents an authentic and revealing picture of these men and their world. Sato’s masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments are accompanied by insightful commentary. With incisive historical research, this volume chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power. A fascinating look at Japanese history as seen through the evolution of the samurai, Legends of the Samurai stands as the ultimate authority on its subject.
Download or read book A History of the Japanese Language written by Bjarke Frellesvig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bjarke Frellesvig describes the development of the Japanese language from its recorded beginnings until the present day as reflected by the written sources and historical record. Beginning with a description of the oldest attested stage of the language, Old Japanese (approximately the eighth century AD), and then tracing the changes which occurred through the Early Middle Japanese (800–1200), Late Middle Japanese (1200–1600) and the Modern Japanese (1600–onwards) periods, a complete internal history of the language is examined and discussed. This account provides a comprehensive study of how the Japanese language has developed and adapted, providing a much needed resource for scholars. A History of the Japanese Language is invaluable to all those interested in the Japanese language and also students of language change generally.
Download or read book written by 紫式部 and published by . This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: