This landmark study chronicles the Imperial Navy's instrumental role in Japan's rise from an isolationist feudal kingdom to a potent military empire.

    Naoki Sakai turns this thinking on its head, and shows how this unity of language really only exists in our manner of representing translation. In analyses of translational transactions and with a focus on the ethnic, cultural, and national identities of modern Japan, he explores the cultural politics inherent in translation. Through the schematic representation of translation, one language is rendered in contrast to another as if the two languages are clearly different and distinct. And yet, Sakai contends, such differences and distinctions between ethnic or national languages (or cultures) are only defined once translation has already rendered them commensurate. His essays thus address translation as a means of figuring (or configuring) difference.

    Because Sonia Ryang was raised in this community, she was able to gain unprecedented access and to bring her personal knowledge to bear on this closed society. In addition to providing a valuable view of the experience of ethnic minorities in what is believed to be an implacably homogeneous culture, Ryang offers a rare and precious glimpse into North Korean culture and the transmission of tradition and ideology within it.Through Chongryun, its own umbrella organization, this community directs its commercial, political, social, and educational affairs, including running its own schools and teaching children about North Korea as their fatherland and Kim Il Sung and his son as their leaders. Despite the oppression and ethnic discrimination directed toward the North Korean community, Ryang depicts Koreans not as a persecuted population, but as ordinary residents whose lives are full of complexities. Although they are highly insulated within their community's boundaries, many—especially of the younger generation—are integrated into Japanese society. They are serious about commitments to North Korea yet dedicated to their lives in Japan. Examining these and other complexities, Ryang explores how, over three generations, individuals and the community reconcile such conflicts and cope with changing attitudes and approaches toward Japanese society and Korean culture.

    With the "Godzilla" movies (1954-1995) at the center of it all, Galbraith has assembled a virtual "Who's Who" of filmography and interviews of the major players in this rising cult world of the fire-breathing lizard. 156 photos. 32 illustrations.

    Norma Field, the daughter of a Japanese woman and an American G.I., and author of the acclaimed In the Realm of a Dying Emperor, returned to Japan in 1995 to tend to her slowly dying grandmother, who had been rendered speechless by multiple strokes. What she finds—both in the memories of her childhood in her grandmother's household and in the altered face of postmodern Japan—forms the substance of her narrative that transcends both memoir and essay to reveal, through crafted fragments, a refraction of the whole of Japan.Having spent her childhood in Japan and her adulthood in the United States, Field speaks from the position of one who straddles two worlds. Her testimony is highly personal, her voice is intimate, her observations are keen and clear. She juxtaposes details from daily life—conversations overheard on the subway; arguments between her mother and aunts; the struggle to feed, bathe, and care for her grandmother—with observations on the political and social changes that have transformed Japan. She shows how the belated coming to terms with the war and continuing avoidance of the same are intimately related to the look and feel of Japanese society today. She gently folds back the complicated layers of blame and responsibility for the war, touching in the process on subjects as diverse as the effects of the atomic bomb, comfort women, biracial/bicultural families, the farewells of Kamikaze pilots, and the dehumanizing effects of Japan's postwar economic boom. A recurrent theme is the observation of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war.From My Grandmother's Bedside is also a contemplation of the many facets of language: the kinds of language with which her grandmother's illness has been negotiated, the wordless language her grandmother speaks, her own relationship to these languages. Through it all runs the realization that the personal and the political are perpetually entangled, that past and present converge and overlap.

    Here was a collection of highly diverse, private voices that provided increasing numbers of readers - many millions by the end of the period - with both its fresh picture of the world and a changing sense of its own place in that world. Creating a Public is the first comprehensive history of Japan's early newspaper press to appear in English in more than half a century. Drawing on decades of research in newspaper articles and editorials, journalists' memoirs and essays, government documents and press analyses, it tells the story of Japan's newspaper press from its elitist beginnings just before the fall of the Tokugawa regime through its years as a shaper of a new political system in the 1880s to its emergence as a nationalistic, often sensational, medium early in the twentieth century. More than an institutional study, this work not only traces the evolution of the press' leading papers, their changing approaches to circulation, news, and advertising, and the personalities of their leading editors; it also examines the interplay between Japan's elite institutions and its rising urban working classes from a wholly new perspective - that of the press. What emerges is the transformation of Japan's commoners (minshu) from uninformed, disconnected subjects to active citizens in the national political process - a modern public. Conversely, minshu begin to play a decisive role in making Japan's newspapers livelier, more sensational, and more influential. As Huffman states in his Introduction: "The newspapers turned the people into citizens; the people turned the papers into mass media." In addition to providing new perspectives on Meiji society and political life, Creating a Public addresses themes important to the study of mass media around the world: the conflict between social responsibility and commercialization, the role of the press in spurring nationa

    Edo Culture presents a selection of Nishiyama's writings that serves not only to provide an excellent introduction to Tokugawa cultural history but also to fill many gaps in our knowledge of the daily life and diversions of the urban populace of the time. Many essays focus on the most important theme of Nishiyama's work: the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as a time of appropriation and development of Japan's culture by its urban commoners.In the first of three main sections, Nishiyama outlines the history of Edo (Tokyo) during the city's formative years, showing how it was shaped by the constant interaction between its warrior and commoner classes. Next, he discusses the spirit and aesthetic of the Edo native and traces the woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e to the communal activities of the city's commoners. Section two focuses on the interaction of urban and rural culture during the nineteenth century and on the unprecedented cultural diffusion that occurred with the help of itinerant performers, pilgrims, and touring actors. Among the essays is a delightful and detailed discourse on Tokugawa cuisine. The third section is dedicated to music and theatre, beginning with a study of no, which was patronized mainly by the aristocracy but surprisingly by commoners as well. In separate chapters, Nishiyama analyzes the relation of social classes to musical genres and the aesthetics of kabuki. The final chapter focuses on vaudeville houses supported by the urban masses.