Japan

"Revere the Emperor, Destroy the Traitors"--armed with this slogan, on February 26, 1936. Rebellious Japanese troops led by members of the Young Officers' Movement seized the center of Tokyo and murdered several prominent officials. The Young...

Students of the late Tokugawa and Meiji periods have long recognized the critical role of rural elites (the gono) in Japan's economic transformation, but the largely impressionistic and episodic scholarship on this pivotal class has created an image of...

Writing Technology in Meiji Japan boldly rethinks the origins of modern Japanese language, literature, and visual culture from the perspective of media history. Drawing upon methodological insights by Friedrich Kittler and extensive archival research,...

In 2001, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro launched a crusade to privatize Japan's postal services. The plan was hailed as a necessary structural reform, but many bemoaned the loss of traditional institutions and the conservative values they represented...

For decades after World War II, Japan chose to focus on soft power and economic diplomacy alongside a close alliance with the United States, eschewing a potential leadership role in regional and global security. Since the end of the Cold War, and...

The intellectual and social theorist Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote An Encouragement of Learning (1872-1876) as a series of pamphlets while completing his critical masterpiece, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1875). These closely linked texts illustrate...

By 1816, Japan had recovered from the famines of the 1780s and moved beyond the political reforms of the 1790s. Despite persistent economic and social stresses, the country seemed to be approaching a new period of growth. The idea that the shogunate...

In the late twelfth century, Japanese people called the transitional period in which they were living the "age of warriors." Feudal clans fought civil wars, and warriors from the Kanto Plain rose up to restore the military regime of their shogun,...

In 1995, an Okinawan schoolgirl was brutally raped by several U.S. servicemen. The incident triggered a chain of protests by women's groups, teachers' associations, labor unions, reformist political parties, and various grassroots organizations across...

Since the late 1980s, Brazilians of Japanese descent have been "return" migrating to Japan as unskilled foreign workers. With an immigrant population currently estimated at roughly 280,000, Japanese Brazilians are now the second largest group of...

In recent years Japan's cuisine, or washoku, has been eclipsing that of France as the world's most desirable food. UNESCO recognized washoku as an intangible cultural treasure in 2013 and Tokyo boasts more Michelin-starred restaurants than Paris and New...

Originally published as Le commerce exterieur du Japon des origines au XVIe siecle in 1988, this new edition of the landmark French study chronicles Japan's transformation from an importer of continental luxury items, raw materials, and techniques to an...

The history and experiences of mixed-race Japan have long remained almost invisible in a country that believes in its own myths of homogeneity, despite a history that extends backwards to the 8th-century emperor Kammu Tenno (who was part Korean) through...

This book examines the struggles of those suffering from Minimata disease, eponymous with the Japanese city in which a Chisso factory released methylmercury into the Shiranui Sea, leading to widespread poisonings. Yuki Miyamoto explores Minimata...

In Waste, Eiko Maruko Siniawer innovatively explores the many ways in which the Japanese have thought about waste-in terms of time, stuff, money, possessions, and resources-from the immediate aftermath of World War II to the present. She shows how...

What happens when a group of people see things that others do not and begin acting accordingly? The Augmented Reality of Pokemon GO: Chronotopes, Moral Panic, and Other Complexities explores this question by examining what happened after Pokemon GO, a...

Heritage Politics: Shuri Castle and Okinawa's Incorporation into Modern Japan, 1879-2000 is a study of Okinawa's incorporation into a subordinate position in the Japanese nation-state, and the role that cultural heritage, especially Okinawa's iconic...

In its diversity of perspectives, The Unfinished Atomic Bomb: Shadows and Reflections is testament to the ways in which contemplations of the A-bomb are endlessly shifting, rarely fixed on the same point or perspective. The compilation of this book is...

Experiences of Japanese American Women during and after World War II: Living in Internment Camps and Rebuilding Life Afterwards examines the experiences of Japanese American women who were in internment camps during World War II and after. Precious...

Mito, an ordinary provincial capital on the outskirts of the Tokyo commuter belt, was 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 family, which ruled...

Employing a wide range of primary source materials, Modern Japan: A History in Documents provides a colorful narrative of Japan's development since 1600. A variety of diary entries, letters, legal documents, and poems brings to life the early modern...

Fourteenth-century Japan witnessed a fundamental political and intellectual conflict about the nature of power and society, a conflict that was expressed through the rituals and institutions of two rival courts. Rather than understanding the collapse of...

This book examines the trajectory and development of the Japanese religious movement Agonshu and its charismatic founder Kiriyama Seiyu. Based on field research spanning 30 years, it examines Agonshu from when it first captured attention in the 1980s...

Although Seibutsu no Sekai (The World of Living Things), the seminal 1941 work of Kinji Imanishi, had an enormous impact in Japan, both on scholars and on the general public, very little is known about it in the English-speaking world. This book makes...

An insightful study in disaster anthropology, this book takes as its focus the fishing town of Otsuchi in Japan's Iwate Prefecture, one of the worst damaged areas in the mammoth 2011 tsunami. Here, 1281 of the pre-tsunami population of 15000 were killed...

Divided Sun is the story of the methods and machinations that have driven Japan's high-tech industrial policies over the last two turbulent decades. It focuses on MITI and Japan's giant electronics firms - their ambitions and conflicts - in the context...

Robots Won't Save Japan addresses the Japanese government's efforts to develop care robots in response to the challenges of an aging population, rising demand for eldercare, and a critical shortage of care workers. Drawing on ethnographic research at key...

From May to September 1939 Japan and the Soviet Union fought a fierce, large-scale undeclared war on the Mongolian plains that ended with a decisive Soviet victory with two important results: Japan reoriented its strategic emphasis towards the south,...

By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate...

From tax and household registers, law codes, and other primary sources, as well as recent Japanese sources, William Wayne Farris has developed the first systematic, scientific analysis of early Japanese population, including the role of disease in...

Enka, a sentimental ballad genre, epitomizes for many the nihonjin no kokoro (heart/soul of Japanese). To older members of the Japanese public, who constitute enka's primary audience, this music-of parted lovers, long unseen rural hometowns, and...

Few historians have attempted an account of Japan since 1945 yet the country's emergence as the second largest economy in the world has been one of the most dramatic and significant developments since the Second World War. Dennis Smith's work takes a...

How did Buddhism, so prominent in Japanese life for over a thousand years, become the target of severe persecution in the social and political turmoil of the early Meiji era? How did it survive attacks against it and reconstitute itself as an...

Long recognized as an authority on Japanese history, Marius Jansen synthesizes a lifetime of scholarship in this landmark book. Bringing together the series of Brown and Haley lectures delivered in 1975 at the University of Puget Sound, Japan and Its...

Long before karaoke's ubiquity and the rise of global brands such as Sony, Japan was a place where new audio technologies found eager users and contributed to new cultural forms. In Electrified Voices, Kerim Yasar traces the origins of the modern...

For decades after World War II, Japan chose to focus on soft power and economic diplomacy alongside a close alliance with the United States, eschewing a potential leadership role in regional and global security. Since the end of the Cold War, and...

Draws on archive of material, a first in English to take an in-depth look at Kyoto's modern transformation - its reinvention after 'collapse' (Meiji Restoration) and relocation of the imperial court to Tokyo. Includes: introduction, chapters on notable...

Okinawa, one of the smallest prefectures of Japan, has drawn much international attention because of the long-standing presence of US bases and the people's resistance against them. In recent years, alternative discourses on Okinawa have emerged due to...

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.What Is a Family? explores the histories of diverse households during the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1868). The households studied here differ in locale and in...

In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence-2,700 court opinions-describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional...