Japan

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...

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...

Given that engineering significantly affects modern society, ensuring its reliability is essential. How then should society implement engineering ethics to ensure its reliability? Can we expect engineering ethics to be nurtured naturally in the practice...

In the 1930s, a cohort of professional human scientists coalesced around a common and particular understanding of objectivity as the foundation of legitimate knowledge, and of fieldwork as the pathway to objectivity. Into the Field is the first...

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...

This book is the English translation of a recent biography of Sakata Michita, one of Japan's leading, yet unassuming, politicians in the postwar era, who was even considered a serious contender for the premiership. While he did not become prime minister...

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...

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...

Stepping Up to the Cold War Challenge: The Norwegian-American Lutheran Experience in 1950s Japan describes the events that led to the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC), an American Christian denomination, to respond to General MacArthur's call for...

This book is a collection of interwoven historical narratives that present an intriguing and little known account of the Ogasawara (Bonin) archipelago and its inhabitants. The narratives begin in the seventeenth century and weave their way through...

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...

Japan's contemporary struggle with low fertility rates is a well-known issue, as are the country's efforts to bolster their population in order to address attendant socioeconomic challenges. However, though this anxiety about and discourse around...

When Europeans first landed in Japan they encountered people they perceived as white-skinned and highly civilized, but these impressions did not endure. Gradually the Europeans' positive impressions faded away and Japanese were seen as yellow-skinned and...

Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times has a heavy emphasis upon the premodern period of Japanese history. No attempt has been made to provide the usual kind of textbook completeness. Hall's fascination with Japanese history lies within the manner in...

In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors. Through his masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta,...

This important study of Japan in premodern times, embracing a span of nearly thirteen centuries, is directed toward the illumination of some important elements of continuity in Japanese history. It is an effort to explain through the detailed analysis of...

This unique book compiles some 120 remarkable letters from Japanese citizens to General Douglas MacArthur during the postwar occupation of Japan (1945-1952). Painstakingly culled from a vast collection, these letters evoke the unfiltered voices of people...

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...

While the loss of sight-whether in early modern Japan or now-may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) could thrive because of disability. The blind of the era were prominent across a wide range of professions,...

While the loss of sight-whether in early modern Japan or now-may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) could thrive because of disability. The blind of the era were prominent across a wide range of professions,...

Unthinking Collaboration uncovers the little-known history of Japanese Americans who weathered the years of World War II on Japanese soil. Severed from the country of their birth when the attack on Pearl Harbor abruptly halted all passenger traffic on...

This volume is based upon personal observations and recollections of the author extending over six different periods of residence in Japan between 1859 and 1877. It examines how the focus of the West towards Japan changed, as Japan became a dominant...

Japan's economic success since the 1950s created a range of serious domestic and international problems which threaten the stability of the country. Within Japan at the start of the 1980s there was a strong mood on the right for remilitarization to give...

Multidisciplinary Studies on the Environment and Civilization draws on research from a diverse range of fields across the humanities, social and natural sciences to discover what is needed to develop an affluent, sustainable and resilient world for the...

"This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.This book examines the trajectory and development of the Japanese religious movement Agonshu and its charismatic founder...

The politics of Japan are less widely reported than its economics. Most people are aware of the economic 'miracle' following the Second World War, whereby Japan became the second largest economy in the world after the United States, and the economic...

This book explores the historical writings of postwar Japanese Marxists - who were, and who continue to be, surprisingly numerous in the Japanese academic world. It shows how they developed in their historical writing ideas of 'radical nationalism',...

This study contains twenty-two essays by leading historians on the Tokugawa Period (1600-1868), eight of which have never before been published. The Tokugawa Period has long been seen as one of Eastern feudalism, awaiting the breakthrough that came with...

How is the relationship between the Japanese state and Japanese society mediated by the press? Does the pervasive system of press clubs, and the regulations underlying them, alter or even censor the way news is reported in Japan? Who benefits from the...

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...