Books in the New Studies in Modern Japan series

This book examines early modern Mito, today an ordinary provincial capital on the outskirts of the Tokyo commuter belt, but once the headquarters of Mito Domain, one of the most consequential places in all of Japan. As one of just three senior branches of the Tokugawa familywhich ruled over Japan for 260 yearsMito's ruling family enjoyed unparalleled status and exerted enormous influence throughout its history. In the seventeenth century, its scholars produced some of early modern Japan's most important historical scholarship. In the eighteenth century, it developed a robust and pragmatic program of reform to confront depopulation and foreign threats. In the nineteenth century, it became the birthplace of a revolutionary ideology that transformed Japan into a modern, imperial nation. The power of these ideas swept across Japan, inspiring activists everywhere to take up the cause of building a new nationbut they also devastated Mito, leading to a brutal civil war that scarred its people for generations. This book complements existing studies of Mito's ideas by focusing on the history of Mito as a place and telling the stories of Mito's politicians, reformers, and ordinary people from the beginning of the domain's history to its end.

This book presents an ethnographic portrait of transnational Japanese-Brazilian labor migrants and their families as they navigate life between Japan and Brazil. The author pays particular attention to gender, generation, and class, and to structures besides work such as family, education, and religion.

This seminal book is the first sustained critical work that engages with the varieties of literature following the triple disastersthe earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

This book investigates the construction of Japaneseness from a transnational perspective. By analyzing a variety of communication during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the author examines how Japaneseness is constructed in relation to discursive Others.

This volume brings together an international group of scholars, artists, and translators to analyze Suga Keijiro's (b. 1958-) multifaceted work.

Japan's Backroom Politics is the translation of a classic study of the rough and tumble of Japanese politics and conservative party factions in the first two decades of postwar Japan. The original book, published in 1967, was written by the preeminent political writer at the time, Watanabe Tsuneo, who later became the controversial owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun. The book was written when a generational change was occurring in Japanese politics after several of the early party leaders had passed away, including his political mentor, Ono Bamboku. Comprising ten chapters, including a comprehensive preface on the author, Japan's Backroom Politics discusses in great detail the history of and personalities within the near-dozen factions and sub-factions that existed at the time. He introduces the resiliency of factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, noting the role of money, influence, party presidency, and the chance at the premiership, among other factors, which subsequent commentators and scholars have elaborated on. Moreover, using extensive data and a penetrating analysis, Watanabe provides a historical as well as an international comparison of Japanese factions, making predictions about the future of Japanese politics.

This cultural history examines representations of pleasure work during Japan's transformation into a modern nation-state. It traces the figure of the prostitute in the context of Japanese nation- and empire-building immediately before and during the Meiji era.

This collection examines literary criticism in postwar Japan. The contributors analyze the debates that occurred among Japanese intellectuals and highlight the various ideological forces that shaped the country's postwar trajectory.

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.

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.

Creating Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, 19452015 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.

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 Shinzo 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.'

Combining work and family remains a major challenge for married women in contemporary Japan, and it's not uncommon for them to quit working when starting a family. Single mothers, by contrast, almost always work, regardless of the age of their children. Despite their eagerness to support themselves and their children through employment, their average income remains low and many live on a household budget close to the poverty line. This book examines how the difficult living conditions facing single mothers in Japan highlight not only the challenges they face in earning a family wage and managing the work-family balance, but also reveals the class dimensions of family life in contemporary Japan.The need to make ends meet with few resources means that mothers may find it difficult to uphold the lifestyle they may consider as most appropriate for the upbringing of their children, and that they may have to choose between their presence at home, in line with the ideal of the middle-class housewife and mother, or devoting more time to earning an income that can pay for a good education. Social class, in this case, is not just a matter of education, occupation, or income, but is also expressed by mothers' approaches to their children's' upbringing and future opportunities in education and employment. Based on life history interviews with single mothers, this study examines the gendered meanings of social class and social achievement and the role of maternal practices in shaping their children's future life trajectories.

The fifty months of the Siberian Intervention encompass the existential crisis which affected Japanese at virtually all levels when confronted with the new 'world situation' left in the wake of the First World War. From elite politicians and military professionals, to public intellectuals and the families of servicemen in small garrison towns, the intervention was perceived as a test of how Japan might fit itself into the emerging postwar world order. Both domestically and internationally Japan's actions in Siberia were seen as critical proof of the nation's ability, depending on one's viewpoint, to embrace or to ride out the 'trends of the times,' the seeming triumph of constitutional democracy and Wilsonian internationalism. The course of the Siberian Intervention illuminates the struggle to cement 'responsible' party cabinets at the heart of Japanese decision making, the high water mark of efforts to bring the Japanese military under civilian control, the attempt to fundamentally reshape Japanese continental policy, and the hopes of millions of Japanese that their voices be heard and their desires respected by the nation's leaders. The book attempts a broad examination of domestic politics, foreign policy, and military action by incorporating a wide array of voices through a detailed examination of public comment and discussion in journals and magazines, the major circulation daily newspapers of Tokyo and Osaka as well as those of smaller cities such as Nara, Mito, Oita, and Tsuruga.

Critics typically regard Abe Kobo (1924-93) as writing against realism, due to his avant-garde aesthetics that challenged the Naturalist realism dominating the literary mainstream and the Socialist realism of the orthodox Left in postwar Japan. He considered his work thoroughly realist, however, and starting in the early 1950s in a series of avant-garde art and literary groups, he championed the possibility of a vital, contemporary realism that challenged the reader to question the reality represented in the text through increasingly self-conscious writing strategies. Through a reassessment of the texts in which he worked out his theory of realism, this study traces the development of his commitment to making truth from a lieto fiction, drama, and reportage that openly display their artifice. Key argues that the reflexivity of Abes texts, which lay bare their own processes of artificial construction in order to reflect how our everyday sense of reality is constructed and maintained, created a critical space for metatextual ideas that were not acknowledged by the literary establishment of his time and have yet to be recognized by critics today. Undergirding his theory and practice of realism was a critique of conventional documentary and of the classic detective story. The texts examined here expose the degree to which the documentarian and the detective are active fabricators of meaning rather than neutral observers of fact. By paying close attention to the tension between the documentary and the fictive in Abes works, Key draws out the ethical implications of his documentary approach, arguing persuasively that the documentary qualities of his writing, such as its valorization of objectivity over psychologism and the realm of concrete things over abstraction are strategies for challenging the dominant assumptions about what constitutes good ethics and good art, as well as the relationship between these two spheres.

The acceleration of media culture globalization processes cross-fertilization and people's exchange beyond the confinement of national borders, but not all of them lead to substantial transformations of national identity or foster cosmopolitan outlook in terms of openness, togetherness and dialogue within and beyond the national borders. Whilst national borders continue to become more and more porous, the measures of border control are constantly reformulated to tame disordered flows and tightly re-demarcate the bordersmaterially, physically, symbolically and imaginatively. Border crossing does not necessarily bring about the transgression of borders. Transgression of borders requires one to fundamentally question how borders in the existing form have been socio-historically constructed and also seek to displace their exclusionary power that unevenly divide ';us' and ';them' and ';here' and ';there.' This book considers how media culture and the management of people's border crossing movement combine with Japans cultural diversity to institute the creation of national cultural borders in Japanese millennials. Critical analysis of this development is a pressing matter if we are to seriously consider how to make Japan's national cultural borders more inclusive and dialogic.

This collection brings together scholars from around the world to recognize and assess the achievements of Tawada Yoko, the prolific and highly lauded author who writes in Japanese and German.

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.

This collection examines how the use of the atomic bomb in Japan has been memorialized. The contributors analyze the cultural legacies of the atomic bomb in political, historical, literary, and artistic contexts.

This collection examines literary criticism in postwar Japan. The contributors analyze the debates that occurred among Japanese intellectuals and highlight the various ideological forces that shaped the country's postwar trajectory.

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.

This collection examines how the use of the atomic bomb in Japan has been memorialized. The contributors analyze the cultural legacies of the atomic bomb in political, historical, literary, and artistic contexts.

This edited collection raises questions about globalization, Japan's relationships with other Asian countries, and the continued importance of U.S.-Japan relations. The contributors analyze the historical development of the region and its current situation from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives to answer these questions.

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.

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.

Situating itself within contemporary Japan, this edited collection raises questions about globalization, Japan's relationships with other Asian countries, and the continued importance of U.S.-Japan relations. The contributors analyze the historical development of the region and its current situation from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives to answer these questions.

Queer Voices from Japan examines the wide range of queer voices in Japan, and the longevity that these minority communities have enjoyed in society. Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker bring together historical and contemporary narratives that contribute to the study of sexual identities in Japan.

Haiku Poetics in Twentieth Century Avant-Garde Poetry is a multicultural, multilingual investigation into the most recognizable, and probably the single most broadly practiced, poetic form in the world today. This argument moves from theorizing the Buddhist poetics of a global haiku, to close critical readings of poems that examine allusions, themes, and images often taken from traditional Japanese predecessors or engaging other works of a shared haiku lineage.

Queer Voices from Japan examines the wide range of queer voices in Japan, and the longevity that these minority communities have enjoyed in society. Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker bring together historical and contemporary narratives that contribute to the study of sexual identities in Japan.