Jeff Mielke
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520265783
- eISBN:
- 9780520947665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520265783.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to understand Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to understand Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between them and wider social discourses. An ancillary aim of the book is to place the Japanese empire within the comparative context of global imperial discourses and to initiate a dialogue with current postcolonial theory, which is so deeply informed by the study of European empire. The chapter then discusses the following: allegories of the self, violent savages and children of paradise, Japan in postcolonial studies, colonial mimicry and mimetic imperialism, the ambivalences of colored imperialism, the triangle of Japanese colonial discourse, and the rhetoric of sameness/similarity. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to understand Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between them and wider social discourses. An ancillary aim of the book is to place the Japanese empire within the comparative context of global imperial discourses and to initiate a dialogue with current postcolonial theory, which is so deeply informed by the study of European empire. The chapter then discusses the following: allegories of the self, violent savages and children of paradise, Japan in postcolonial studies, colonial mimicry and mimetic imperialism, the ambivalences of colored imperialism, the triangle of Japanese colonial discourse, and the rhetoric of sameness/similarity. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Yuriko Saito
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278350
- eISBN:
- 9780191707001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278350.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter analyzes a familiar aesthetic experience in our everyday life: appreciation of the distinctive characteristics of objects, environments, and temporal contexts. It ranges from the ...
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This chapter analyzes a familiar aesthetic experience in our everyday life: appreciation of the distinctive characteristics of objects, environments, and temporal contexts. It ranges from the quintessential attributes of a natural object, the ambience created by harmoniously-united diverse elements, sense of place, and seasonableness, illustrated by a number of examples from 18th century British aesthetics, Japanese culture, including literature, gardening, the tea ceremony, food, and packaging, and the Arts and Crafts movement. This aesthetic sensibility nurtures a moral sensibility by promoting an open-minded and respectful attitude toward what the objects offer, an attitude underlying today's ecological design premised upon designing with nature. At the same time, certain limits to this kind of aesthetic sensibility also need to be observed for moral, social, and political reasons in order to avoid aestheticization of suffering and misery, as well as guarding against denying minority taste in favor of preserving a sense of place.Less
This chapter analyzes a familiar aesthetic experience in our everyday life: appreciation of the distinctive characteristics of objects, environments, and temporal contexts. It ranges from the quintessential attributes of a natural object, the ambience created by harmoniously-united diverse elements, sense of place, and seasonableness, illustrated by a number of examples from 18th century British aesthetics, Japanese culture, including literature, gardening, the tea ceremony, food, and packaging, and the Arts and Crafts movement. This aesthetic sensibility nurtures a moral sensibility by promoting an open-minded and respectful attitude toward what the objects offer, an attitude underlying today's ecological design premised upon designing with nature. At the same time, certain limits to this kind of aesthetic sensibility also need to be observed for moral, social, and political reasons in order to avoid aestheticization of suffering and misery, as well as guarding against denying minority taste in favor of preserving a sense of place.
Nicolas Langlitz
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780691204284
- eISBN:
- 9780691204260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691204284.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter discusses the birth of cultural primatology in mid-twentieth-century Japan, looking at the prehistory of the chimpanzee culture wars. The story begins in 1948 with the observation of a ...
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This chapter discusses the birth of cultural primatology in mid-twentieth-century Japan, looking at the prehistory of the chimpanzee culture wars. The story begins in 1948 with the observation of a troop of Japanese macaques on a subtropical islet. As Kinji Imanishi and his students fed them sweet potatoes on the beach, the monkeys invented a way of washing off the sand in the sea. Subsequently, they passed on the new behavior from generation to generation. The Japanese primatologists conceived of this social transmission as preculture. They framed their anthropomorphic conceptualization, as well as a research practice that made no effort to minimize human interference, in terms of Japanese culture. Soon Imanishi's anti-Darwinian evolutionary theory became engulfed in national and international controversy over its association with nationalist politics and its breach of the divide between science and the humanities. Ironically, this self-consciously Japanese brand of scholarship had not only appropriated European and American elements of evolutionist thought, including the idea of animal traditions, but also stirred up a controversy over primate cultures that polarized primatology far beyond the boundaries of national cultures.Less
This chapter discusses the birth of cultural primatology in mid-twentieth-century Japan, looking at the prehistory of the chimpanzee culture wars. The story begins in 1948 with the observation of a troop of Japanese macaques on a subtropical islet. As Kinji Imanishi and his students fed them sweet potatoes on the beach, the monkeys invented a way of washing off the sand in the sea. Subsequently, they passed on the new behavior from generation to generation. The Japanese primatologists conceived of this social transmission as preculture. They framed their anthropomorphic conceptualization, as well as a research practice that made no effort to minimize human interference, in terms of Japanese culture. Soon Imanishi's anti-Darwinian evolutionary theory became engulfed in national and international controversy over its association with nationalist politics and its breach of the divide between science and the humanities. Ironically, this self-consciously Japanese brand of scholarship had not only appropriated European and American elements of evolutionist thought, including the idea of animal traditions, but also stirred up a controversy over primate cultures that polarized primatology far beyond the boundaries of national cultures.
Yasuhito Kinoshita
Christie Kiefer (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520075955
- eISBN:
- 9780520911789
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520075955.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Faced with the decline of the traditional family and the explosive growth of the over-sixty-five population, the Japanese are looking for new ways to care for their elders. This study documents the ...
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Faced with the decline of the traditional family and the explosive growth of the over-sixty-five population, the Japanese are looking for new ways to care for their elders. This study documents the birth of a major social phenomenon in Japan: the planned retirement community. In the mid-1980s, the author of this book spent a year living in Japan's first such community, Fuji-no-Sato. His collaboration with a cultural gerontologist provides here a detailed study of a retirement community in a non-Western culture. Fuji-no-Sato is a social community with no visible traditions. The book shows that its residents' preference for long-established relationships creates the need for the invention of relationships which have no precedent in Japanese society, and reveals much about Japanese culture, and about the “graying of society” that plagues the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Its lessons about sensitivity to the elderly's values and the need for clear communication have applications in other cultures as well.Less
Faced with the decline of the traditional family and the explosive growth of the over-sixty-five population, the Japanese are looking for new ways to care for their elders. This study documents the birth of a major social phenomenon in Japan: the planned retirement community. In the mid-1980s, the author of this book spent a year living in Japan's first such community, Fuji-no-Sato. His collaboration with a cultural gerontologist provides here a detailed study of a retirement community in a non-Western culture. Fuji-no-Sato is a social community with no visible traditions. The book shows that its residents' preference for long-established relationships creates the need for the invention of relationships which have no precedent in Japanese society, and reveals much about Japanese culture, and about the “graying of society” that plagues the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Its lessons about sensitivity to the elderly's values and the need for clear communication have applications in other cultures as well.
Robert Tierney
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520265783
- eISBN:
- 9780520947665
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520265783.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This is a study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through an analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, the book ...
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This is a study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through an analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, the book demonstrates how imperial Japan constructed its own identity in relation both to the West and to the people it colonized. By examining the representations of Taiwanese aborigines and indigenous Micronesians in the works of prominent writers, the book shows that the trope of the savage underwent several metamorphoses over the course of Japan's colonial period—violent headhunter to be subjugated, ethnographic other to be studied, happy primitive to be exoticized, and hybrid colonial subject to be assimilated.Less
This is a study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through an analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, the book demonstrates how imperial Japan constructed its own identity in relation both to the West and to the people it colonized. By examining the representations of Taiwanese aborigines and indigenous Micronesians in the works of prominent writers, the book shows that the trope of the savage underwent several metamorphoses over the course of Japan's colonial period—violent headhunter to be subjugated, ethnographic other to be studied, happy primitive to be exoticized, and hybrid colonial subject to be assimilated.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the ...
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This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai in 1908, tensions resulting from Japanese encroachment on Chinese sovereignty and resources drive the action. In this way, The Chinese Connection prefigures the theme of ethnic imperialism, with the Japanese as antagonists who represent a colonizing power bent on erasing Chinese culture and imposing Japanese culture upon the citizens.Less
This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai in 1908, tensions resulting from Japanese encroachment on Chinese sovereignty and resources drive the action. In this way, The Chinese Connection prefigures the theme of ethnic imperialism, with the Japanese as antagonists who represent a colonizing power bent on erasing Chinese culture and imposing Japanese culture upon the citizens.
Miriam Silverberg
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222731
- eISBN:
- 9780520924628
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222731.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a ...
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This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. This book uses sources such as movie magazines, ethnographies of the homeless, and the most famous photographs from this era to capture the spirit, textures, and language of a time when the media reached all classes, connecting the rural social order to urban mores. Employing the concept of montage as a metaphor that informed the organization of Japanese mass culture during the 1920s and 1930s, the book challenges the erasure of Japanese colonialism and its legacies. It evokes vivid images from daily life during the 1920s and 1930s, including details about food, housing, fashion, modes of popular entertainment, and attitudes toward sexuality. This study demonstrates how new public spaces, new relationships within the family, and an ironic sensibility expressed the attitude of Japanese consumers who identified with the modern as providing a cosmopolitan break from tradition at the same time that they mobilized for war.Less
This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. This book uses sources such as movie magazines, ethnographies of the homeless, and the most famous photographs from this era to capture the spirit, textures, and language of a time when the media reached all classes, connecting the rural social order to urban mores. Employing the concept of montage as a metaphor that informed the organization of Japanese mass culture during the 1920s and 1930s, the book challenges the erasure of Japanese colonialism and its legacies. It evokes vivid images from daily life during the 1920s and 1930s, including details about food, housing, fashion, modes of popular entertainment, and attitudes toward sexuality. This study demonstrates how new public spaces, new relationships within the family, and an ironic sensibility expressed the attitude of Japanese consumers who identified with the modern as providing a cosmopolitan break from tradition at the same time that they mobilized for war.
Mark Meli
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099142
- eISBN:
- 9789882206632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099142.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter focuses on two specific shows: Sekai wa ga kokoro no tabi/World Journey of My Heart and Sekai ururun taizaiki/Homestay in the World. This raises the issue of generic mutation within ...
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This chapter focuses on two specific shows: Sekai wa ga kokoro no tabi/World Journey of My Heart and Sekai ururun taizaiki/Homestay in the World. This raises the issue of generic mutation within televisual conventions: the persona fronting, the scripting and editing techniques, the inevitably collaborative status of the production, and the influence of advertising and revenue concerns. It is shown that the World Journey of My Heart is certainly of a higher educational quality than any of the travel shows that can presently be seen on Japanese TV. It also looks at other cultures through the lens of personal or cultural memory, or both, in an attempt to introduce foreign cultures through the manner in which they have influenced living people, either directly, that is through past personal journeys, or in any of a number of indirect ways. Homestay in the World, while very self-consciously focused upon the traveler featured each week, really functions quite independently of the actor, as the match between traveler and destination usually seems almost arbitrary, with the young talent usually having little to add to our understanding of the other.Less
This chapter focuses on two specific shows: Sekai wa ga kokoro no tabi/World Journey of My Heart and Sekai ururun taizaiki/Homestay in the World. This raises the issue of generic mutation within televisual conventions: the persona fronting, the scripting and editing techniques, the inevitably collaborative status of the production, and the influence of advertising and revenue concerns. It is shown that the World Journey of My Heart is certainly of a higher educational quality than any of the travel shows that can presently be seen on Japanese TV. It also looks at other cultures through the lens of personal or cultural memory, or both, in an attempt to introduce foreign cultures through the manner in which they have influenced living people, either directly, that is through past personal journeys, or in any of a number of indirect ways. Homestay in the World, while very self-consciously focused upon the traveler featured each week, really functions quite independently of the actor, as the match between traveler and destination usually seems almost arbitrary, with the young talent usually having little to add to our understanding of the other.
Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836948
- eISBN:
- 9780824870911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836948.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the creation of a regional market for Japanese popular culture, with particular emphasis on the expansion of music and television companies into East Asia since the end of the ...
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This chapter examines the creation of a regional market for Japanese popular culture, with particular emphasis on the expansion of music and television companies into East Asia since the end of the 1980s. It begins with a review of the macro politicoeconomic conditions that contributed to the transfer of Japanese popular culture to East Asia. It then provides a quantitative analysis of the market share of Japanese music and television programs in East Asia and goes on to discuss how Japanese music and television companies have become actively involved in local cultural scenes. It shows that Japanese music and television have carved out a sizable position in East Asian regional markets. The chapter also considers the role of piracy in enhancing the dissemination of Japanese cultural commodities in East Asia and the relationship between censorship and bootleg markets. It proposes a new framework for viewing the dynamism of bootleg markets in East Asia.Less
This chapter examines the creation of a regional market for Japanese popular culture, with particular emphasis on the expansion of music and television companies into East Asia since the end of the 1980s. It begins with a review of the macro politicoeconomic conditions that contributed to the transfer of Japanese popular culture to East Asia. It then provides a quantitative analysis of the market share of Japanese music and television programs in East Asia and goes on to discuss how Japanese music and television companies have become actively involved in local cultural scenes. It shows that Japanese music and television have carved out a sizable position in East Asian regional markets. The chapter also considers the role of piracy in enhancing the dissemination of Japanese cultural commodities in East Asia and the relationship between censorship and bootleg markets. It proposes a new framework for viewing the dynamism of bootleg markets in East Asia.
Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836948
- eISBN:
- 9780824870911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836948.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the impact of Japan's cultural industries on local cultural industries in East Asia. Before assessing the influence of Japanese cultural industries on local cultural production ...
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This chapter examines the impact of Japan's cultural industries on local cultural industries in East Asia. Before assessing the influence of Japanese cultural industries on local cultural production and appreciation for Japanese products, the chapter considers the transfer of Japanese popular culture production formats to the culture markets of East Asia and their adaptation by local cultural industries, especially in Korea. It then looks at some of the Japanese formats that were transferred to East Asia through collaboration, including the production of Japanese-style idols, based on the Japanese notion of kawaii (usually translated into English as “cuteness” or “lovability”), and Japanese pop music or “J-pop.” It also discusses the Tie-Up strategy used in the marketing of Japanese cultural products, along with the Japanese origins of the so-called “Korean Wave.” Finally, it presents in-depth interviews with sixty-eight cultural industry insiders in East Asia to highlight the importance of Japanese cultural industries to the regionalization process in East Asia.Less
This chapter examines the impact of Japan's cultural industries on local cultural industries in East Asia. Before assessing the influence of Japanese cultural industries on local cultural production and appreciation for Japanese products, the chapter considers the transfer of Japanese popular culture production formats to the culture markets of East Asia and their adaptation by local cultural industries, especially in Korea. It then looks at some of the Japanese formats that were transferred to East Asia through collaboration, including the production of Japanese-style idols, based on the Japanese notion of kawaii (usually translated into English as “cuteness” or “lovability”), and Japanese pop music or “J-pop.” It also discusses the Tie-Up strategy used in the marketing of Japanese cultural products, along with the Japanese origins of the so-called “Korean Wave.” Finally, it presents in-depth interviews with sixty-eight cultural industry insiders in East Asia to highlight the importance of Japanese cultural industries to the regionalization process in East Asia.
Miriam Silverberg
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222731
- eISBN:
- 9780520924628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222731.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The Japanese café waitress was the working-class embodiment of the Modern Girl and as such she sang the blues. While she was commodified as an erotic object, at the same time she articulated her own ...
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The Japanese café waitress was the working-class embodiment of the Modern Girl and as such she sang the blues. While she was commodified as an erotic object, at the same time she articulated her own sensual desires and her protests against the constraints of her workplace. If freedom of movement was a hallmark of the Modern Girl, confinement defined the cultural milieu of the café, and neither customer nor café waitress transgressed gender or culture lines as did the Modern Girl. By looking at the extent to which she may have conformed to expectations placed upon her and of how and when she may have resisted, one can also gain insights into the sexual politics of modern Japanese culture.Less
The Japanese café waitress was the working-class embodiment of the Modern Girl and as such she sang the blues. While she was commodified as an erotic object, at the same time she articulated her own sensual desires and her protests against the constraints of her workplace. If freedom of movement was a hallmark of the Modern Girl, confinement defined the cultural milieu of the café, and neither customer nor café waitress transgressed gender or culture lines as did the Modern Girl. By looking at the extent to which she may have conformed to expectations placed upon her and of how and when she may have resisted, one can also gain insights into the sexual politics of modern Japanese culture.
Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836948
- eISBN:
- 9780824870911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836948.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the commodification of popular culture in Japan as well as the capacity of the domestic market to manufacture and export anime, movies, video games, television programs, music, ...
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This chapter examines the commodification of popular culture in Japan as well as the capacity of the domestic market to manufacture and export anime, movies, video games, television programs, music, and manga. It first considers the structure of Japan's cultural industries and the process of cultural commodification based on examples from music, television, and manga in order to provide a broad picture of the Japanese popular culture markets. It then discusses the main features of popular culture production and the capacity of Japan's cultural industries for production, consumption, and export. It also explores the role of “freeters” and “otaku” in Japan's popular culture production, along with the Japanese government's involvement in the production and export of popular culture and its initiatives to support the sector. It argues that the structure and size of the domestic market and the experience of Japan's cultural industries at home have fostered the competitiveness of Japanese popular culture products abroad.Less
This chapter examines the commodification of popular culture in Japan as well as the capacity of the domestic market to manufacture and export anime, movies, video games, television programs, music, and manga. It first considers the structure of Japan's cultural industries and the process of cultural commodification based on examples from music, television, and manga in order to provide a broad picture of the Japanese popular culture markets. It then discusses the main features of popular culture production and the capacity of Japan's cultural industries for production, consumption, and export. It also explores the role of “freeters” and “otaku” in Japan's popular culture production, along with the Japanese government's involvement in the production and export of popular culture and its initiatives to support the sector. It argues that the structure and size of the domestic market and the experience of Japan's cultural industries at home have fostered the competitiveness of Japanese popular culture products abroad.
Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836948
- eISBN:
- 9780824870911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836948.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book has investigated the political economy of Japanese popular culture in East Asia as well as the role of Japanese popular culture in the construction of the East Asian region. By analyzing ...
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This book has investigated the political economy of Japanese popular culture in East Asia as well as the role of Japanese popular culture in the construction of the East Asian region. By analyzing the expansion of Japanese cultural industries into East Asian markets since the late 1980s, the book has demonstrated how Japan's popular culture products, agents, and industries contribute to the regionalization of East Asia. This final chapter summarizes the book's main findings and discusses its implications. It first explains why Japanese popular culture has been successful in East Asia and how that success has affected popular culture markets and governments in the region. It then considers how expansion of Japanese cultural industries is likely to affect the regionalization process in East Asia in both the short and long terms before concluding with some analytical and theoretical insights about the relationship between popular culture and the process of regional formation.Less
This book has investigated the political economy of Japanese popular culture in East Asia as well as the role of Japanese popular culture in the construction of the East Asian region. By analyzing the expansion of Japanese cultural industries into East Asian markets since the late 1980s, the book has demonstrated how Japan's popular culture products, agents, and industries contribute to the regionalization of East Asia. This final chapter summarizes the book's main findings and discusses its implications. It first explains why Japanese popular culture has been successful in East Asia and how that success has affected popular culture markets and governments in the region. It then considers how expansion of Japanese cultural industries is likely to affect the regionalization process in East Asia in both the short and long terms before concluding with some analytical and theoretical insights about the relationship between popular culture and the process of regional formation.
Julia Adeney Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520228542
- eISBN:
- 9780520926844
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520228542.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter explores a hiatus in nature's overt political presence in Japan after around 1890 and until the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that the Social Darwinian concept of nature proved so ...
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This chapter explores a hiatus in nature's overt political presence in Japan after around 1890 and until the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that the Social Darwinian concept of nature proved so detrimental to nationalistic aspirations that it was disregarded during the 1890s, and describes the development of a more nationalistic and useful concept of nature related to Japanese culture. The chapter contends that Japan's twentieth-century sense of nature was a new creation configured in reaction against Social Darwinism and in conformity with the requirements of national pride.Less
This chapter explores a hiatus in nature's overt political presence in Japan after around 1890 and until the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that the Social Darwinian concept of nature proved so detrimental to nationalistic aspirations that it was disregarded during the 1890s, and describes the development of a more nationalistic and useful concept of nature related to Japanese culture. The chapter contends that Japan's twentieth-century sense of nature was a new creation configured in reaction against Social Darwinism and in conformity with the requirements of national pride.
Weijung Chang
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9789888390809
- eISBN:
- 9789888390441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390809.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the localization of Fujoshi culture in Taiwan by situating it within the context of Japanophilia. By examining the Japanophilia phenomenon and ...
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The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the localization of Fujoshi culture in Taiwan by situating it within the context of Japanophilia. By examining the Japanophilia phenomenon and interviewing twelve Taiwanese Fujoshi, the author argues that the role Japaneseness plays in Taiwanese Fujoshi’s BL fantasies, which facilitates their desire for confluent intimacy, is heavily related to the historical, political, and social context in which both the familiarity and foreignness of Japaneseness have been gradually shaped. It shows how gender, sexuality, and national and cultural practices intersect with each other, resulting in the creation of fantasies and pleasures, in the sense that the construction of Taiwanese Fujoshi BL fantasies contains a range of women’s attitudes toward male homoerotism and their desire for Japaneseness. It not only explores how Fujoshi cultures are practiced and localized under different social contexts, but also suggests a situating of Taiwan as an exemplary mediator within the East Asian cultural sphere by indicating how the complicated historical, political, and cultural relation with Japan has contributed to shape a kind of hybrid cultural practice.Less
The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the localization of Fujoshi culture in Taiwan by situating it within the context of Japanophilia. By examining the Japanophilia phenomenon and interviewing twelve Taiwanese Fujoshi, the author argues that the role Japaneseness plays in Taiwanese Fujoshi’s BL fantasies, which facilitates their desire for confluent intimacy, is heavily related to the historical, political, and social context in which both the familiarity and foreignness of Japaneseness have been gradually shaped. It shows how gender, sexuality, and national and cultural practices intersect with each other, resulting in the creation of fantasies and pleasures, in the sense that the construction of Taiwanese Fujoshi BL fantasies contains a range of women’s attitudes toward male homoerotism and their desire for Japaneseness. It not only explores how Fujoshi cultures are practiced and localized under different social contexts, but also suggests a situating of Taiwan as an exemplary mediator within the East Asian cultural sphere by indicating how the complicated historical, political, and cultural relation with Japan has contributed to shape a kind of hybrid cultural practice.
Andrew Morris
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520262799
- eISBN:
- 9780520947603
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520262799.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This cultural history of baseball in Taiwan traces the game's social, ethnic, political, and cultural significance since its introduction on the island more than one hundred years ago. Introduced by ...
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This cultural history of baseball in Taiwan traces the game's social, ethnic, political, and cultural significance since its introduction on the island more than one hundred years ago. Introduced by the Japanese colonial government at the turn of the century, baseball was expected to “civilize” and modernize Taiwan's Han Chinese and Austronesian Aborigine populations. After World War II, the game was tolerated as a remnant of Japanese culture and then strategically employed by the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), even as it was also enthroned by Taiwanese politicians, cultural producers, and citizens as their national game. In considering baseball's cultural and historical implications, the book addresses a number of societal themes crucial to understanding modern Taiwan, the question of Chinese “reunification,” and East Asia as a whole.Less
This cultural history of baseball in Taiwan traces the game's social, ethnic, political, and cultural significance since its introduction on the island more than one hundred years ago. Introduced by the Japanese colonial government at the turn of the century, baseball was expected to “civilize” and modernize Taiwan's Han Chinese and Austronesian Aborigine populations. After World War II, the game was tolerated as a remnant of Japanese culture and then strategically employed by the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), even as it was also enthroned by Taiwanese politicians, cultural producers, and citizens as their national game. In considering baseball's cultural and historical implications, the book addresses a number of societal themes crucial to understanding modern Taiwan, the question of Chinese “reunification,” and East Asia as a whole.
Michael Dylan Foster
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520253612
- eISBN:
- 9780520942677
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520253612.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yôkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks ...
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Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yôkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. This book tracks yôkai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media. Focusing on the intertwining of belief and commodification, fear and pleasure, horror and humor, this book illuminates different conceptions of the “natural” and the “ordinary” and sheds light on broader social and historical paradigms—and ultimately on the construction of Japan as a nation.Less
Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yôkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. This book tracks yôkai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media. Focusing on the intertwining of belief and commodification, fear and pleasure, horror and humor, this book illuminates different conceptions of the “natural” and the “ordinary” and sheds light on broader social and historical paradigms—and ultimately on the construction of Japan as a nation.
Julia Adeney Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226136806
- eISBN:
- 9780226136820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226136820.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Japanese political theorist Maruyama Masao attacked the tyranny of nature in the name of political emancipation. In contrast to Frankfurt School ...
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Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Japanese political theorist Maruyama Masao attacked the tyranny of nature in the name of political emancipation. In contrast to Frankfurt School intellectuals who traced German fascism to the ruthless mastery of nature, he blamed Japanese fascism on enslavement to nature, understood as the dead hand of tradition and the indolence of sensual pleasures. Central to Maruyama's criticism of Japan's totalitarian system was the idea that Japan had not yet escaped nature's hegemony. Indeed, prewar and wartime ideology made the Japanese nation the embodiment of nature, equating the existing national community with nature itself. In such a system, Maruyama argued, autonomous individuals could never hope to flourish because of the extraordinary difficulty of imagining their world other than how they found it. If nature was defined as Japanese culture and Japanese culture as nature, there was no authority for challenging the status quo unless one turned, subversively as Maruyama did, to resources outside Japanese tradition, resources suspect as unpatriotic as well as lacking the justificatory force of either nature or culture. In short, according to Maruyama, nature still dominated Japanese ideology, deforming the modernity and the freedom for which he somewhat ambiguously yearned.Less
Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Japanese political theorist Maruyama Masao attacked the tyranny of nature in the name of political emancipation. In contrast to Frankfurt School intellectuals who traced German fascism to the ruthless mastery of nature, he blamed Japanese fascism on enslavement to nature, understood as the dead hand of tradition and the indolence of sensual pleasures. Central to Maruyama's criticism of Japan's totalitarian system was the idea that Japan had not yet escaped nature's hegemony. Indeed, prewar and wartime ideology made the Japanese nation the embodiment of nature, equating the existing national community with nature itself. In such a system, Maruyama argued, autonomous individuals could never hope to flourish because of the extraordinary difficulty of imagining their world other than how they found it. If nature was defined as Japanese culture and Japanese culture as nature, there was no authority for challenging the status quo unless one turned, subversively as Maruyama did, to resources outside Japanese tradition, resources suspect as unpatriotic as well as lacking the justificatory force of either nature or culture. In short, according to Maruyama, nature still dominated Japanese ideology, deforming the modernity and the freedom for which he somewhat ambiguously yearned.
Taku Suzuki
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833442
- eISBN:
- 9780824870775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833442.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on educational institutions that actively sought to foster Okinawan-Bolivians as culturally hybrid subjects by infusing them with objectified and naturalized cultures. ...
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This chapter focuses on educational institutions that actively sought to foster Okinawan-Bolivians as culturally hybrid subjects by infusing them with objectified and naturalized cultures. Specifically, it examines Okinawan-Bolivian schools in Colonia Okinawa, where most Nisei and Sansei children received Japanese language education and learned about the Japanese and Okinawan cultures. In portraying the various school events in Colonia Okinawa, such as the school track meet and Japanese-language speech contest, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which these educational institutions enabled, even encouraged, Okinawan-Bolivian youth to form, nurture, and embody their identities through the terms and images of essentialized and naturalized (Japanese, Okinawan, and Bolivian) cultures. These educational institutions in effect shaped Okinawan-Bolivian youth into transnational subjects who have developed an ambiguous sense of belonging in either Bolivia or Japan.Less
This chapter focuses on educational institutions that actively sought to foster Okinawan-Bolivians as culturally hybrid subjects by infusing them with objectified and naturalized cultures. Specifically, it examines Okinawan-Bolivian schools in Colonia Okinawa, where most Nisei and Sansei children received Japanese language education and learned about the Japanese and Okinawan cultures. In portraying the various school events in Colonia Okinawa, such as the school track meet and Japanese-language speech contest, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which these educational institutions enabled, even encouraged, Okinawan-Bolivian youth to form, nurture, and embody their identities through the terms and images of essentialized and naturalized (Japanese, Okinawan, and Bolivian) cultures. These educational institutions in effect shaped Okinawan-Bolivian youth into transnational subjects who have developed an ambiguous sense of belonging in either Bolivia or Japan.
Samuel Perry
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824838935
- eISBN:
- 9780824869557
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824838935.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book turns a critical eye on the influential proletarian cultural movement that flourished in 1920s and 1930s Japan. This was a diverse, cosmopolitan, and highly contested moment in Japanese ...
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This book turns a critical eye on the influential proletarian cultural movement that flourished in 1920s and 1930s Japan. This was a diverse, cosmopolitan, and highly contested moment in Japanese history when notions of political egalitarianism were being translated into cultural practices specific to the Japanese experience. The book offers an account of the passions—and antinomies—that animated one of the most admirable intellectual and cultural movements of Japan's twentieth century, and argues that proletarian literature, cultural workers, and institutions fundamentally enrich our understanding of Japanese culture. What sustained the proletarian movement's faith in the idea that art and literature were indispensable to the task of revolution? How did the movement manage to enlist artists, teachers, and scientist into its ranks, and what sorts of contradictions arose in the merging of working-class and bourgeois cultures? The book asks these and other questions as it historicizes proletarian Japan at the intersection of bourgeois aesthetics, radical politics, and a flourishing modern print culture. The book details how cultural activists “recast” forms of modern culture into practices commensurate with the goals of revolution. It offers a new approach to studying revolutionary culture. By examining the margins of the proletarian cultural movement, the book redefines its center as it historicizes proletarian children's culture, avant-garde “wall fiction,” and a literature that bears witness to Japan's fraught relationship with its Korean colony. Along the way, the book shows how proletarian culture opened up new critical spaces in the intersections of class, popular culture, childhood, gender, and ethnicity.Less
This book turns a critical eye on the influential proletarian cultural movement that flourished in 1920s and 1930s Japan. This was a diverse, cosmopolitan, and highly contested moment in Japanese history when notions of political egalitarianism were being translated into cultural practices specific to the Japanese experience. The book offers an account of the passions—and antinomies—that animated one of the most admirable intellectual and cultural movements of Japan's twentieth century, and argues that proletarian literature, cultural workers, and institutions fundamentally enrich our understanding of Japanese culture. What sustained the proletarian movement's faith in the idea that art and literature were indispensable to the task of revolution? How did the movement manage to enlist artists, teachers, and scientist into its ranks, and what sorts of contradictions arose in the merging of working-class and bourgeois cultures? The book asks these and other questions as it historicizes proletarian Japan at the intersection of bourgeois aesthetics, radical politics, and a flourishing modern print culture. The book details how cultural activists “recast” forms of modern culture into practices commensurate with the goals of revolution. It offers a new approach to studying revolutionary culture. By examining the margins of the proletarian cultural movement, the book redefines its center as it historicizes proletarian children's culture, avant-garde “wall fiction,” and a literature that bears witness to Japan's fraught relationship with its Korean colony. Along the way, the book shows how proletarian culture opened up new critical spaces in the intersections of class, popular culture, childhood, gender, and ethnicity.
