Rethinking Japanese Studies

Author : Kaori Okano,Yoshio Sugimoto
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2017-08-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351654968

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Rethinking Japanese Studies by Kaori Okano,Yoshio Sugimoto Pdf

Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires non-Western, Japan-specific emic concepts and theories. This book takes this question further and explores how we can understand Japanese society and culture by combining Euro-American concepts and theories with those that originate in Japan. Because Japan is the only liberal democracy to have achieved a high level of capitalism outside the Western cultural framework, Japanese Studies has long provided a forum for deliberations about the extent to which the Western conception of modernity is universally applicable. Furthermore, because of Japan’s military, economic and cultural dominance in Asia at different points in the last century, Japanese Studies has had to deal with the issues of Japanocentrism as well as Eurocentrism, a duality requiring complex and nuanced analysis. This book identifies variations amongst Japanese Studies academic communities in the Asia-Pacific and examines the extent to which relatively autonomous scholarship, intellectual approach or theories exist in the region. It also evaluates how studies on Japan in the region contribute to global Japanese Studies and explores their potential for formulating concrete strategies to unsettle Eurocentric dominance of the discipline.

Author : Yoshihiko Amino
Publisher : U of M Center for Japanese Studies
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Japan
ISBN : 1929280718

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Rethinking Japanese History by Yoshihiko Amino Pdf

In this fascinating journey across centuries, Amino Yoshihiko, the premier historian of medieval Japan, invites us to rethink everything we thought we knew about Japanese history. From reconsidering the roles of outcastes and outlaws, to the provenance of "Japan (Nihon)," to the very meaning of writing, Amino offers a powerful critique of the conventional wisdom about Japan's past. Instead of depicting Japan as an isolated island country full of immobile peasants dominated by swaggering warriors and an unbroken line of sacred emperors, he unveils a dynamic history of an archipelago driven by the competition to control trade and movement, in which warlords and aristocrats share the main stage with pirates, courtesans, beggars, and dancing monks. Written for a nonspecialist audience and standing on a foundation of fifty years of research in a vast and eclectic range of primary sources, Rethinking Japanese History introduces the English reader to one of Japan's most original and provocative historians. Since the 1970s, Amino has inspired readers with his view of Japanese history "from the sea," in which the power politics of the samurai class were contrasted with the countervailing authorities of religious institutions, artisanal groups, and "lords of the sea" who enabled the movement of people and goods from the Asian continent to every harbor and village of Japan. In his portraits of an archaic and medieval past permeated with "places of freedom" and a grand struggle between ideologies of trade and agriculture, Amino challenged his contemporaries to reconsider not only their understanding of Japan's past, but also its present and future. Rethinking Japanese History calls on us to contemplate seriously the meaning of the deep past in our present day. By challenging the reader to reexamine our presumptions of the past, Amino offers us a chance to reimagine the present.

Author : Arthur Stockwin,Kweku Ampiah
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2017-02-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781498537933

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Rethinking Japan by Arthur Stockwin,Kweku Ampiah Pdf

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 Shinzō 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.”

Author : Sonja Ganseforth,Hanno Jentzsch
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2021-07-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000415407

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Rethinking Locality in Japan by Sonja Ganseforth,Hanno Jentzsch Pdf

This book inquires what is meant when we say "local" and what "local" means in the Japanese context. Through the window of locality, it enhances an understanding of broader political and socio-economic shifts in Japan. This includes demographic change, electoral and administrative reform, rural decline and revitalization, welfare reform, as well as the growing metabolic rift in energy and food production. Chapters throughout this edited volume discuss the different and often contested ways in which locality in Japan has been reconstituted, from historical and contemporary instances of administrative restructuring, to more subtle social processes of making – and unmaking – local places. Contributions from multiple disciplinary perspectives are included to investigate the tensions between overlapping and often incongruent dimensions of locality. Framed by a theoretical discussion of socio-spatial thinking, such issues surrounding the construction and renegotiation of local places are not only relevant for Japan specialists, but also connected with topical scholarly debates further afield. Accordingly, Rethinking Locality in Japan will appeal to students and scholars from Japanese studies and human geography to anthropology, history, sociology and political science.

Author : Akihiro Ogawa,Philip Seaton
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2020-04-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000054200

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New Frontiers in Japanese Studies by Akihiro Ogawa,Philip Seaton Pdf

Over the last 70 years, Japanese Studies scholarship has gone through several dominant paradigms, from ‘demystifying the Japanese’, to analysis of Japanese economic strength, to discussion of global interest in Japanese popular culture. This book assesses this literature, considering future directions for research into the 2020s and beyond. Shifting the geographical emphasis of Japanese Studies away from the West to the Asia-Pacific region, this book identifies topic areas in which research focusing on Japan will play an important role in global debates in the coming years. This includes the evolution of area studies, coping with aging populations, the various patterns of migration and environmental breakdown. With chapters from an international team of contributors, including significant representation from the Asia-Pacific region, this book enacts Yoshio Sugimoto’s notion of ‘cosmopolitan methodology’ to discuss Japan in an interdisciplinary and transnational context and provides overviews of how Japanese Studies is evolving in other Asian countries such as China and Indonesia. New Frontiers in Japanese Studies is a thought-provoking volume and will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese and Asian Studies. The Introduction and Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Author : Liu Jianhui,Sano Mayuko
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:887177733

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Rethinking "Japanese studies" from practices in the Nordic region by Liu Jianhui,Sano Mayuko Pdf

Author : Roy Starrs
Publisher : Global Oriental
Page : 561 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2011-10-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004211308

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Rethinking Japanese Modernism by Roy Starrs Pdf

By adopting an open, multidisciplinary, and transnational approach, this book sheds new light both on the specific achievements and on the often-unexpected interrelationships of the writers, artists and thinkers who helped to define the Japanese version of modernism and modernity.

Author : Paul Midford
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2011-01-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780804772174

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Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security by Paul Midford Pdf

Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security argues that Japanese public opinion matters and has acted to prevent overseas military deployments involving combat while increasingly supportive of a more normal military establishment capable of autonomously defending Japanese territory.

Author : Yumiko Iida
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013-03-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781134564651

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Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan by Yumiko Iida Pdf

This volume is a major reconsideration of Japanese late modernity and national hegemony which examines the creative and academic works of a number of influential Japanese thinkers. The author situates the process of Japanese knowledge production in the interface between the immediate historical and the wider socio-economic and politico-cultural contexts accompanying the Japanese post-war experience of modernity. This book will be of great value to anyone interested in the history of contemporary Japanese culture and society.

Author : Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Publisher : ANU Press
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-08-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9781760463700

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On the Frontiers of History by Tessa Morris-Suzuki Pdf

Why is it that we so readily accept the boundary lines drawn around nations or around regions like ‘Asia’ as though they were natural and self-evident, when in fact they are so mutable and often so very arbitrary? What happens to people not only when the borders they seek to cross become heavily guarded, but also when new borders are drawn straight through the middle of their lives? The essays in this book address these questions by starting from small places on the borderlands of East Asia and looking outwards from the small towards the large, asking what these ‘minor pasts’ tell us about the grand narratives of history. In the process, it takes the reader on a journey from Renaissance European visions of ‘Tartary’, through nineteenth-century racial theorising, imperial cartography and indigenous experiences of modernity, to contemporary debates about Big History in an age of environmental crisis.

Author : Peter J. Katzenstein
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2008-03-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781135976934

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Rethinking Japanese Security by Peter J. Katzenstein Pdf

Since the unexpected end of the Cold War, standard arguments about power politics can no longer be adopted uncritically. This has led to a renewed interest in Japan’s unusually peaceful security policy. Japan’s championing of "comprehensive security" is central to this collection. Peter J. Katzenstein’s essays explore this concept which not only encompasses traditional military concerns but also domestic aspects of security. The book's focus on counter-terrorism and national security highlights a policy approach which, over decades, Japan has developed with political patience and diplomatic finesse. These essays advocate an eclectic approach that helps in recognizing new questions and that seek to combine elements from different analytical perspectives in the exploration of novel lines of argument. Additionally, the book features an entirely new, substantial introduction that explores and elaborates the themes of the collection while bringing it up to date. This collection will be of significant interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics, security studies and international relations.

Author : Yoshikazu Shiobara,Kohei Kawabata,Joel Matthews
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2019-07-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351387873

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Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan by Yoshikazu Shiobara,Kohei Kawabata,Joel Matthews Pdf

The recent manifestation of exclusionism in Japan has emerged at a time of intensified neoliberal economic policies, increased cross-border migration brought on by globalization, the elevated threat of global terrorism, heightened tensions between East Asian states over historical and territorial conflicts, and a backlash by Japanese conservatives over perceived historical apologism. The social and political environment for minorities in Japan has shifted drastically since the 1990s, yet many studies of Japan still tend to view Japan through the dominant discourses of “ethnic homogeneity (tanitsu minzoku shakai)” and “middle-class society (so ̄churyu ̄-shakai)” which positions the exclusion of minorities as an exceptional phenomenon. While exclusionism has been recognized as a serious threat to minority groups, it has not often been considered a representative issue for the whole of Japanese society. This tendency will persist until the discourses of tanitsu minzoku shakai and so ̄churyu ̄-shakai are systematically debunked and Japan is widely recognized as both multiethnic and socio-economically stratified. Today, as with most advanced capitalist countries, serious social divides occasioned by the impacts of globalization and neoliberalism have destabilized Japanese society. This book explores not only how Japanese society is diversified and unequal, but also how diversity and inequality have caused people to divide into separate realities from which conflict and violence have emerged. It empirically examines the current situation while considering the historical development of exclusionism from the interdisciplinary viewpoints of history, policy studies, cultural studies, sociology and cultural anthropology. In addition to analyzing the realities of division and exclusionism, the authors propose theoretical alternatives to overcome such cultural and social divides.

Author : Margaret Childs
Publisher : U of M Center for Japanese Studies
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1996-07
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0939512742

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Rethinking Sorrow by Margaret Childs Pdf

Childs argues that "The Tale of Genmu," "Tales Told on Mount Koya," "The Three Monks," and "The Seven Nuns" form a small, coherent subgroup of stories that describe how people were inspired to religious commitment. These "revelatory tales" consist of firsthand accounts offered by groups of monks and nuns who tell and listen to each other's tales in turn, a public sharing that is, in fact, a religious ritual by which means the storytellers hope to confirm their beliefs and strengthen their religious resolve. Rethinking Sorrow is important reading for anyone interested in medieval Japanese literature and culture, in Buddhist didactic literature, and in homoerotic literature. It provides a private, personal look at the religious and literary world of late medieval Japan.

Author : Adriana Boscaro,Franco Gatti,Massimo Raveri
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2018-12-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135880811

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Rethinking Japan Vol 2 by Adriana Boscaro,Franco Gatti,Massimo Raveri Pdf

These papers explore the debate over new directions in Japanese studies.

Author : Adriana Boscaro,Franco Gatti,Massimo Raveri
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2014-01-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135880538

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Rethinking Japan Vol 1. by Adriana Boscaro,Franco Gatti,Massimo Raveri Pdf

These papers explore the debate over new directions in Japanese studies.