Download or read book Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro Japanese Cultural Production written by William H. Bridges, IV and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the complex conversations taking place in texts of all sorts traveling between Africans, African diasporas, and Japanese across disciplinary, geographic, racial, ethnic, and cultural borders.
Download or read book Third Worlds Within written by Daniel Widener and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Third Worlds Within, Daniel Widener expands conceptions of the struggle for racial justice by reframing antiracist movements in the United States in a broader internationalist context. For Widener, antiracist struggles at home are connected to and profoundly shaped by similar struggles abroad. Drawing from an expansive historical archive and his own activist and family history, Widener explores the links between local and global struggles throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He uncovers what connects seemingly disparate groups like Japanese American and Black communities in Southern California or American folk musicians and revolutionary movements in Asia. He also centers the expansive vision of global Indigenous movements, the challenges of Black/Brown solidarity, and the influence of East Asian organizing on the US Third World Left. In the process, Widener reveals how the fight against racism unfolds both locally and globally and creates new forms of solidarity. Highlighting the key strategic role played by US communities of color in efforts to defeat the conjoined forces of capitalism, racism, and imperialism, Widener produces a new understanding of history that informs contemporary social struggle.
Download or read book Citizen of the World written by Phillip Luke Sinitiere and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his 1952 book In Battle for Peace, published when W. E. B. Du Bois was eighty-three years old, the brilliant black scholar announced that he was a “citizen of the world.” Citizen of the World chronicles selected chapters of Du Bois’s final three decades between the 1930s and 1960s. It maps his extraordinarily active and productive latter years to social, cultural, and political transformations across the globe. From his birth in 1868 until his death in 1963, Du Bois sought the liberation of black people in the United States and across the world through intellectual and political labor. His tireless efforts documented and demonstrated connections between freedom for African-descended people abroad and black freedom at home. In concert with growing scholarship on his twilight years, the essays in this volume assert the fundamental importance of considering Du Bois’s later decades not as a life in decline that descended into blind ideological allegiance to socialism and communism but as the life of a productive, generative intellectual who responded rationally, imaginatively, and radically to massive mid-century changes around the world, and who remained committed to freedom’s realization until his final hour.
Download or read book The Affect of Difference written by Christopher P. Hanscom and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Affect of Difference is a collection of essays offering a new perspective on the history of race and racial ideologies in modern East Asia. Contributors approach this subject through the exploration of everyday culture from a range of academic disciplines, each working to show how race was made visible and present as a potential means of identification. By analyzing artifacts from diverse media including travelogues, records of speech, photographs, radio broadcasts, surgical techniques, tattoos, anthropometric postcards, fiction, the popular press, film and soundtracks—an archive that chronicles the quotidian experiences of the colonized—their essays shed light on the politics of inclusion and exclusion that underpinned Japanese empire. One way this volume sets itself apart is in its use of affect as a key analytical category. Colonial politics depended heavily on the sentiments and moods aroused by media representations of race, and authorities promoted strategies that included the colonized as imperial subjects while simultaneously excluding them on the basis of "natural" differences. Chapters demonstrate how this dynamic operated by showing the close attention of empire to intimate matters including language, dress, sexuality, family, and hygiene. The focus on affect elucidates the representational logic of both imperialist and racist discourses by providing a way to talk about inequalities that are not clear cut, to show gradations of power or shifts in definitions of normality that are otherwise difficult to discern, and to present a finely grained perspective on everyday life under racist empire. It also alerts us to the subtle, often unseen ways in which imperial or racist affects may operate beyond the reach of our methodologies. Taken together, the essays in this volume bring the case of Japanese empire into comparative proximity with other imperial situations and contribute to a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the role that race has played in East Asian empire.
Download or read book Playing in the Shadows written by William H. Bridges and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-02-10 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playing in the Shadows considers the literature engendered by postwar Japanese authors’ robust cultural exchanges with African Americans and African American literature. The Allied Occupation brought an influx of African American soldiers and culture to Japan, which catalyzed the writing of black characters into postwar Japanese literature. This same influx fostered the creation of organizations such as the Kokujin kenkyū no kai (The Japanese Association for Negro Studies) and literary endeavors such as the Kokujin bungaku zenshū (The Complete Anthology of Black Literature). This rich milieu sparked Japanese authors’—Nakagami Kenji and Ōe Kenzaburō are two notable examples—interest in reading, interpreting, critiquing, and, ultimately, incorporating the tropes and techniques of African American literature and jazz performance into their own literary works. Such incorporation leads to literary works that are “black” not by virtue of their representations of black characters, but due to their investment in the possibility of technically and intertextually black Japanese literature. Will Bridges argues that these “fictions of race” provide visions of the way that postwar Japanese authors reimagine the ascription of race to bodies—be they bodies of literature, the body politic, or the human body itself.
Download or read book Sonia Sanchez s Poetic Spirit through Haiku written by John Zheng and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of ten critical essays is the first scholarly criticism of haiku by Sonia Sanchez. Her haiku, full of power and emotional voice for people, love, human nature, and African American experience, redefine haiku in English and African American poetic expression with her unique individuality.
Download or read book Single Mothers in Contemporary Japan written by Aya Ezawa and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on life history interviews of single mothers in Japan, this detailed study examines the socioeconomic consequences of becoming a single mother and pursuing a lifestyle outside of the married mother and housewife norm in contemporary Japan.
Download or read book Japan Viewed from Interdisciplinary Perspectives written by Yoneyuki Sugita and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Asia-Pacific region greatly surpasses the world average. When the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is better realized, then the world’s largest free trade zone will be firmly established. It seems that this region has a very rosy outlook indeed; however, this region also faces a large number of serious problems such as: atomic energy in Japan, conflicts about East Asian regional integration, the decline of the Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA), and the TPP’s possible impact on the Japanese universal health insurance system. We now face a possible Sino-Japanese military conflict concerning the Senkaku Islands (or Diaoyutai Islands). In short, the Asia-Pacific region has both a rosy future and the potential influence from unstable and dangerous elements at work within the region at present. The main purpose of this book is to analyze historical development, whilst looking at the contemporary situation of Japan from interdisciplinary perspectives. This book asks three major questions: (1) Is this really globalization? (2) What are Japan’s relations with other Asian countries? (3) Do U.S.-Japan relations still matter? Fourteen leading scholars in their fields answer these questions from interdisciplinary perspectives.
Download or read book The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism 1945 52 written by Atsuko Ueda and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of its defeat in World War II, as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation, literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of a number of important issues, including the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of “literature” and “politics,” and the origins of crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War. This collection features works by Japanese intellectuals written in the immediate postwar period. These writings—many appearing in English for the first time—offer explorations into the social, political, and philosophical debates among Japanese literary elites that shaped the country’s literary culture in the aftermath of defeat.
Download or read book Rethinking Japan written by Arthur Stockwin and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors argue that with the election of the Abe Government in December 2012, Japanese politics has entered a radically new phase they describe as the “2012 Political System.” The system began with the return to power of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), after three years in opposition, but in a much stronger electoral position than previous LDP-based administrations in earlier decades. Moreover, with the decline of previously endemic intra-party factionalism, the LDP has united around an essentially nationalist agenda never absent from the party’s ranks, but in the past was generally blocked, or modified, by factions of more liberal persuasion. Opposition weakness following the severe defeat of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration in 2012 has also enabled the Abe Government to establish a political stability largely lacking since the 1990s. The first four chapters deal with Japanese political development since 1945 and factors leading to the emergence of Abe Shinzō as Prime Minister in 2012. Chapter 5 examines the Abe Government’s flagship economic policy, dubbed “Abenomics.” The authors then analyse four highly controversial objectives promoted by the Abe Government: revision of the 1947 ‘Peace Constitution’; the introduction of a Secrecy Law; historical revision, national identity and issues of war apology; and revised constitutional interpretation permitting collective defence. In the final three chapters they turn to foreign policy, first examining relations with China, Russia and the two Koreas, second Japan and the wider world, including public diplomacy, economic relations and overseas development aid, and finally, the vexed question of how far Japanese policies are as reactive to foreign pressure. In the Conclusion, the authors ask how far right wing trends in Japan exhibit common causality with shifts to the right in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. They argue that although in Japan immigration has been a relatively minor factor, economic stagnation, demographic decline, a sense of regional insecurity in the face of challenges from China and North Korea, and widening gaps in life chances, bear comparison with trends elsewhere. Nevertheless, they maintain that “[a] more sane regional future may be possible in East Asia.”
Download or read book Creating Japan s Ground Self Defense Force 1945 2015 written by David Hunter-Chester and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creating Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, 1945–2015 is a timely contribution to postwar Japan security studies. It is the first comprehensive account of Japan’s post-1945 army, including a comprehensive institutional history, together with the evolution of roles and missions and the adoption of successive professional identities. The organizational history is embedded within a thorough examination of Japan’s own defense policy, as well as of America’s policy of alliance with Japan. The book examines and challenges assumptions about the drafting and adoption of the War Renunciation clause of Japan’s postwar Peace Constitution, Article 9, which uniquely not only renounces war, but the arms to wage war. Thus Japan’s army is not called an army, but the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). The work also examines the place of an army and soldiers in the formation of Japan’s national identity after its last devastating war, and explores the impact of constitutional, legal and policy restrictions, as well as the power of the legacy of the still-largely vilified Imperial Japanese Army on GSDF members who seek to serve because “there are people we want to protect.” The study is rounded by an examination of the place of soldiers in Japan’s popular culture, focused on movies, manga and anime, assessing the impact on the GSDF of a public imagination that most often ignores or villainizes soldiers, though ending with a note that some positive images of soldiers and of the GSDF members themselves have started to appear in the last few years. The book’s author, a retired U.S. Army soldier who spent more than twenty years working, studying and training with the GSDF, offers a broad-ranging exploration of a unique organization. This work is extensively researched, using English and Japanese sources, and will appeal to anyone interested in Japanese security studies, alliance studies, and military imagery in Japanese pop culture, as well as to students of military history, international security, international relations, and cultural identity.
Download or read book Transpacific Correspondence written by Yuichiro Onishi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1954, Japan has become home to a vibrant but little-known tradition of Black Studies. Transpacific Correspondence introduces this intellectual tradition to English-speaking audiences, placing it in the context of a long history of Afro-Asian solidarity and affirming its commitments to transnational inquiry and cosmopolitan exchange. More than six decades in the making, Japan’s Black Studies continues to shake up commonly held knowledge of Black history, culture, and literature and build a truly globalized field of Black Studies.
Download or read book Yokohama and the Silk Trade written by Yasuhiro Makimura and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides a political and economic examination of the impact of the silk trade on nineteenth-century Japan. It analyzes the role of Japan’s eastern interior region and the port of Yokohama and argues that the growth of the silk industry was largely responsible for the integration of Japan into the global economy.
Download or read book The Unfinished Atomic Bomb written by David Lowe and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its diversity of perspectives, The Unfinished Atomic Bomb: Shadows and Reflections is testament to the ways in which contemplations of the A-bomb are endlessly shifting, rarely fixed on the same point or perspective. The compilation of this book is significant in this regard, offering Japanese, American, Australian, and European perspectives. In doing so, the essays here represent a complex series of interpretations of the bombing of Hiroshima, and its implications both for history, and for the present day. From Kuznick’s extensive biographical account of the Hiroshima bomb pilot, Paul Tibbets, and contentious questions about the moral and strategic efficacy of dropping the A-bomb and how that has resonated through time, to Jacobs’ reflections on the different ways in which Hiroshima and its memorialization are experienced today, each chapter considers how this moment in time emerges, persistently, in public and cultural consciousness. The discussions here are often difficult, sometimes controversial, and at times oppositional, reflecting the characteristics of A-bomb scholarship more broadly. The aim is to explore the various ways in which Hiroshima is remembered, but also to consider the ongoing legacy and impact of atomic warfare, the reverberations of which remain powerfully felt.
Download or read book Public Scholarship in Literary Studies written by Rachel Arteaga and published by Amherst College Press. This book was released on 2021-05-21 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Scholarship in Literary Studies demonstrates that literary criticism has the potential not only to explain, but to actively change our terms of engagement with current realities. Rachel Arteaga and Rosemary Johnsen bring together accomplished public scholars who make significant contributions to literary scholarship, teaching, and the public good. The volume begins with essays by scholars who write regularly for large public audiences in primarily digital venues, then moves to accounts of research-based teaching and engagement in public contexts, and finally turns to important new models for cross-institutional partnerships and campus-community engagement. Grounded in scholarship and written in an accessible style, Public Scholarship in Literary Studies will appeal to scholars in and outside the academy, students, and those interested in the public humanities. "There are books of literary criticism that attempt to reach crossover audiences but none that take this particular public-humanities-focused-on-literary criticism perspective."--Kathryn Temple, Georgetown University Contributions by Rachel Arteaga, Christine Chaney, Jim Cocola, Daniel Coleman, Christopher Douglas, Gary Handwerk, Cynthia L. Haven, Rosemary Erickson Johnsen, Anu Taranath, Carmaletta M. Williams, and Lorraine York.
Download or read book Music and Words written by Patrick M. Patterson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Composer Nakayama Shimpei (1887-1952) wrote more than 300 popular songs in his lifetime. Most are still well known and recorded regularly. An entrepreneur, he found ways to create popular songs that powered Japan’s nascent recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s. An artist, his combination of Japanese and Western musical styles and tropes appealed to Japanese sentiments in a way that not only reflected the historical and social context, but anticipated and explained those historical changes to his listeners. This book seeks to apply contextual analysis of Nakayama’s popular songs to the events that occurred in the context of Japan’s development of a record industry and popular music market between 1887 and 1952. The book evaluates Nakayama’s positions within the world of musicians, and as a bridge between intellectuals and pure artists, on the one hand, and the Japanese people on the other to understand how popular songs can enrich and deepen our understanding of the history of political and industrial development in modern Japan. The book concludes that Nakayama’s uncanny ability to make listening to Western music a comfortable experience for Japanese by adding elements from Japanese musical styles allowed him to be successful financially, and to hold respect within the artistic community as well. His skill in creating songs that spoke to large groups of people, successfully marketing those songs through an understanding of how music would sound on record, and careful communication with his audiences to understand their interests and lives made him the most popular composer of his time, and a powerful asset for Japan Victor, Inc., his record company. The ultimate goal of the book is to show how popular songs can be utilized as primary sources to help deepen our understanding of historical contexts.
Download or read book The T S Eliot Studies Annual written by John D. Morgenstern and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 3 features a special forum on “Eliot and Green Modernism,” edited by Julia E. Daniel, as well as a special forum titled “First Readings of the Eliot–Hale Archive,” edited by John Whittier-Ferguson.
