Download or read book J Pop Love Song written by Shiree McCarver and published by Parker Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American Charlene Alfred, a 41-year-old writer is about to have her first best selling novel Blu's Diary turned into an internationally released miniseries which features a jaded Japanese rock star that has hit rock bottom. Her manager gives her an ultimatum: use the Japanese lead actor of their choice or forget the project.\nWhen 24-year-old Japanese pop sensation known as Kane hears that the writer he's always admired, strongly believe he's too young for the crucial role, he makes it his mission to change her mind; only to find that there is a connection between him and this woman that defies all reasoning and logic. The building of emotions and passions between these two characters keeps you almost breathless as you journey to the beautifully exotic city of Tokyo, mixed with new technology and old traditions. Come and experience this amazing love story that will put two careers in jeopardy and two lives in danger as possessiveness, buried secrets, and lies, are exposed. Will love be enough to fight the ghosts of the past?

Download or read book J Pop Love Song written by Shiree McCarver and published by . This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American Charlene Alfred, a forty-one year old writer is about to have her first best selling novel "Blu's Diary" turned into an internationally released miniseries. Her manager gives her an ultimatum-use the Japanese lead actor of their choice or forget the project. When twenty-four year old Japanese pop sensation known as "Kane" hears that the writer he's always admired strongly believes he's too young for the crucial role he makes it his mission to change her mind. Kane finds there is a connection between him and this woman that defies all reasoning and logic.

Download or read book Blue Nippon written by E. Taylor Atkins and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Japanese Popular Music written by Carolyn S. Stevens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese popular culture has been steadily increasing in visibility both in Asia and beyond in recent years. This book examines Japanese popular music, exploring its historical development, technology, business and production aspects, audiences, and language and culture. Based both on extensive textual and aural analysis, and on anthropological fieldwork, it provides a wealth of detail, finding differences as well as similarities between the Japanese and Western pop music scenes. Carolyn Stevens shows how Japanese popular music has responded over time to Japan's relationship to the West in the post-war era, gradually growing in independence from the political and cultural hegemonic presence of America. Similarly, the volume explores the ways in which the Japanese artist has grown in independence vis-à-vis his/her role in the production process, and examines in detail the increasingly important role of the jimusho, or the entertainment management agency, where many individual artists and music industry professionals make decisions about how the product is delivered to the public. It also discusses the connections to Japanese television, film, print and internet, thereby providing through pop music a key to understanding much of Japanese popular culture more widely.

Download or read book I Love You So Mochi written by Sarah Kuhn and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Kasie West, I Love You So Mochi is a delightfully sweet and irrepressibly funny novel from accomplished author Sarah Kuhn. "As sweet and satisfying as actual mochi... a tender love story wrapped up in food, fashion, and family. I gobbled it up." -- Maurene Goo, author of The Way You Make Me FeelKimi Nakamura loves a good fashion statement.She's obsessed with transforming everyday ephemera into Kimi Originals: bold outfits that make her and her friends feel like the Ultimate versions of themselves. But her mother disapproves, and when they get into an explosive fight, Kimi's entire future seems on the verge of falling apart. So when a surprise letter comes in the mail from Kimi's estranged grandparents, inviting her to Kyoto for spring break, she seizes the opportunity to get away from the disaster of her life.When she arrives in Japan, she's met with a culture both familiar and completely foreign to her. She loses herself in the city's outdoor markets, art installations, and cherry blossom festival -- and meets Akira, a cute aspiring med student who moonlights as a costumed mochi mascot. And what begins as a trip to escape her problems quickly becomes a way for Kimi to learn more about the mother she left behind, and to figure out where her own heart lies.In I Love You So Mochi, author Sarah Kuhn has penned a delightfully sweet and irrepressibly funny novel that will make you squee at the cute, cringe at the awkward, and show that sometimes you have to lose yourself in something you love to find your Ultimate self.

Download or read book Love Songs written by Ted Gioia and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The love song is timeless. From its beginnings, it has been shaped by bohemians and renegades, slaves and oppressed minorities, prostitutes, immigrants and other excluded groups. But what do we really know about the origins of these intimate expressions of the heart? And how have our changing perceptions about topics such as sexuality and gender roles changed our attitudes towards these songs? In Love Songs: The Hidden History, Ted Gioia uncovers the unexplored story of the love song for the first time. Drawing on two decades of research, Gioia presents the full range of love songs, from the fertility rites of ancient cultures to the sexualized YouTube videos of the present day. The book traces the battles over each new insurgency in the music of love--whether spurred by wandering scholars of medieval days or by four lads from Liverpool in more recent times. In these pages, Gioia reveals that the tenderest music has, in different eras, driven many of the most heated cultural conflicts, and how the humble love song has played a key role in expanding the sphere of individualism and personal autonomy in societies around the world. Gioia forefronts the conflicts, controversies, and the battles over censorship and suppression spurred by such music, revealing the outsiders and marginalized groups that have played a decisive role in shaping our songs of romance and courtship, and the ways their innovations have led to reprisals and strife. And he describes the surprising paths by which the love song has triumphed over these obstacles, and emerged as the dominant form of musical expression in modern society.

Download or read book Shadows of Tokyo written by Matthew Legare and published by . This book was released on 2018-05-21 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tokyo, December 1931 As Japan expands its empire in China and unemployment ravages the economy, Police Inspector Kenji Aizawa receives an anonymous call about the imminent assassination of a leading statesman. The secret informant is Reiko Watanabe, geisha mistress to the plot's mastermind. Reiko, headstrong and outspoken, prefers a "modern" life to being a geisha and is horrified that her lover, the American-educated descendant of samurai, Masaru Ryusaki, has become a fascist firebrand. Together with his allies in the Imperial Army, Ryusaki plans to overthrow the civilian government and establish a military dictatorship. Torn between honor and duty, Reiko and Inspector Aizawa must forge an unlikely alliance in order to stay one step ahead of Ryusaki and a fanatical Army officer. All the while, they uncover a shadowy conspiracy that reaches into the upper echelons of government, international finance, and even around the Imperial Throne itself. Set during the intersection of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Great Depression, Shadows of Tokyo brings the turbulent and dangerous world of prewar Japan to vivid life. Shadows of Tokyo is the first book in a noir historical thriller series set in pre-World War II Japan. ""Shadows of Tokyo" portrays the somber zeitgeist of Japan's capital in 1931, where rightist assassins armed with swords, handguns and bombs stalk key political and business figures." --The Japan Times "Legare's story reflects conscientious research into historic detail." --The Japan Times "Five Star Reviewers Have It Right: This Series Sizzles" --Amazon Review "Unique premise, memorable characters." --Amazon Review

Download or read book Hand to Hold written by JJ Heller and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This heartwarming picture book reassures children that a parent’s love never lets go—based on the poignant lyrics of JJ Heller’s beloved lullaby “Hand to Hold.” “May the living light inside you be the compass as you go / May you always know you have my hand to hold.” With delightful illustrations and an engaging rhyme scheme, this book offers the promise of security and love every child’s heart longs to know. From skipping stones and counting stars to climbing trees and telling stories, every moment is wrapped snugly in the certain warmth of a parent’s presence and God’s blessing. With poignancy and joy, this bedtime read captures the unconditional love parents want their children to know but so often fail to express amid the chaos of daily life.

Download or read book What s Love Got to Do with It written by Thomas J. Scheff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do pop songs have to say about love? Surprisingly, this book shows that most popular love songs express much more about alienation, infatuation, estrangement, jealousy, and heartbreak than about love. Scheff takes the reader on a tour of popular lyrics from 80 years of American song to reveal the emotional and relational meaning of lyrics. He shows that popular love songs typically steer listeners away from a healthy connection to the emotions surrounding love. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of love songs while appreciating the author's suggestions for how listeners and artists could enrich the art of the love song.

Download or read book This is Your Brain on Music written by Daniel Levitin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review

Download or read book Quit Your Band Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground written by Ian F. Martin and published by . This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the sugar rush of Tokyo's idol subculture to the discordant polyrhythms of its experimental punk and indie scenes, this book by Japan Times music columnist Ian F. Martin offers a witty and tender look at the wide spectrum of issues that shape Japanese music today. With unique theories about the evolution of J-pop as well as its history, infrastructure and (sub)cultures, Martin deconstructs an industry that operates very differently from counterparts overseas. Based partly on interviews with influential artists, label owners and event organisers, Martin's book combines personal anecdotes with cultural criticism and music history. An accessible and humorous account emerges of why some creative acts manage to overcome institutional pressures, without quitting their bands. Ian Martin's writing about Japanese music has appeared in The Japan Times, CNN Travel and The Guardian among other places. Martin is based in Tokyo, where he also runs Call And Response Records.

Download or read book Japanese English written by James Stanlaw and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volumes in this series set out to provide a contemporary record of the spread and development of the English language in South, Southeast, and East Asia from both a linguistic and literary perspective. Each volume will reflect themes that cut across national boundaries, including the study of language policies; globalization and linguistic imperialism; English in the media; English in law, government and education; 'hybrid' Englishes; and the bilingual creativity manifested by the vibrant creative writing found in a swathe of Asian societies. This book gives an in-depth analysis of the use of the English language in modern Japan. It explores the many ramifications the Japanese-English language and culture contact situation has for not only Japanese themselves, but also others in the international community. Data for this book has been gathered using anthropological ethnographic fieldwork, augmented by archival sources, written materials, and items from popular culture and the mass media. An interdisciplinary approach, including those of anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive science and symbolic anthropology, is taken in the exploration of the topics here. This book's arguments focus on four major theoretical linguistic and social issues, namely the place of the Japanese-English case in the larger context of 'World Englishes'; the place of the Japanese-English case in a general theory of language and culture contact; how Japanese English informs problems of categorization, meaning construction and cognition; and what it says about the social construction of identity and sense of self, nationalism and race. This book will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, and all readers who are interested in language contact, sociolinguistics, English as an international language, and World Englishes. It will also appeal to those who are interested in Japan and popular culture.

Download or read book Tokyo Boogie Woogie written by Hiromu Nagahara and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-10 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry, Hiromu Nagahara connects the rise of mass entertainment, epitomized by ryūkōka (“popular songs”), with Japan’s transformation into a middle-class society in the years after World War II. With the arrival of major international recording companies like Columbia and Victor in the 1920s, Japan’s pop music scene soon grew into a full-fledged culture industry that reached out to an avid consumer base through radio, cinema, and other media. The stream of songs that poured forth over the next four decades represented something new in the nation’s cultural landscape. Emerging during some of the most volatile decades in Japan’s history, popular songs struck a deep chord in Japanese society, gaining a devoted following but also galvanizing a vociferous band of opponents. A range of critics—intellectuals, journalists, government officials, self-appointed arbiters of taste—engaged in contentious debates on the merits of pop music. Many regarded it as a scandal, evidence of an increasingly debased and Americanized culture. For others, popular songs represented liberation from the oppressive political climate of the war years. Tokyo Boogie-Woogie is a tale of competing cultural dynamics coming to a head just as Japan’s traditionally hierarchical society was shifting toward middle-class democracy. The pop soundscape of these years became the audible symbol of changing times.

Download or read book The Love Songs of W E B Du Bois written by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • A NOMINEE FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • A Time Must-Read Book of the Year • A Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year • A Oprah Daily Top 20 Books of the Year • A People 10 Best Books of the Year • A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year • A BookPage Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year • A Kirkus 100 Best Novels of the Year • An Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10 Best Southern Books of the Year • A Parade Pick • A Chicago Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year • A KCRW Top 10 Books of the Year An Instant Washington Post, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller "Epic…. I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family…. A combination of historical and modern story—I’ve never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." —Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club Pick An Indie Next Pick • A New York Times Book Everyone Will Be Talking About • A People 5 Best Books of the Summer • A Good Morning America 15 Summer Book Club Picks • An Essence Best Book of the Summer • A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month • A CNN Best Book of the Month • A Time 11 Best Books of the Month • A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A BookPage Writer to Watch • A USA Today Book Not to Miss • A Chicago Tribune Summer Must-Read • An Observer Best Summer Book • A Millions Most Anticipated Book • A Ms. Book of the Month • A Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick • A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Literary Book of the Summer • A Deep South Best Book of the Summer • Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award The 2020 NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this National Book Award-longlisted, magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

Download or read book Turn It Up written by National Geographic Kids and published by National Geographic Kids. This book was released on 2019 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history of music, covering the most famous musicians, major music genres, instruments and sounds, and the artistry of distinctive musical styles.

Download or read book Sayonara Amerika Sayonara Nippon written by Michael K. Bourdaghs and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning of the American Occupation in 1945 to the post-bubble period of the early 1990s, popular music provided Japanese listeners with a much-needed release, channeling their desires, fears, and frustrations into a pleasurable and fluid art. Pop music allowed Japanese artists and audiences to assume various identities, reflecting the country's uncomfortable position under American hegemony and its uncertainty within ever-shifting geopolitical realities. In the first English-language study of this phenomenon, Michael K. Bourdaghs considers genres as diverse as boogie-woogie, rockabilly, enka, 1960s rock and roll, 1970s new music, folk, and techno-pop. Reading these forms and their cultural import through music, literary, and cultural theory, he introduces readers to the sensual moods and meanings of modern Japan. As he unpacks the complexities of popular music production and consumption, Bourdaghs interprets Japan as it worked through (or tried to forget) its imperial past. These efforts grew even murkier as Japanese pop migrated to the nation's former colonies. In postwar Japan, pop music both accelerated and protested the commodification of everyday life, challenged and reproduced gender hierarchies, and insisted on the uniqueness of a national culture, even as it participated in an increasingly integrated global marketplace. Each chapter in Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon examines a single genre through a particular theoretical lens: the relation of music to liberation; the influence of cultural mapping on musical appreciation; the role of translation in transmitting musical genres around the globe; the place of noise in music and its relation to historical change; the tenuous connection between ideologies of authenticity and imitation; the link between commercial success and artistic integrity; and the function of melodrama. Bourdaghs concludes with a look at recent Japanese pop music culture.

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.