In 1868 the city was renamed Tokyo and made the official capital of the nation. Both literally and figuratively, present-day Tokyo rests upon the foundations of Edo, and much of what is now thought of as traditional Japanese culture (woodblock prints, kabuki, sumo, haiku poets) found its final form in Edo. In this book, through over 200 black and white drawings and insightful text, old Edo is brought vividly to life--its planning, its construction, and the cultural energy that made it one of the most exciting, and populous, cities on the face of the earth.Edo was nothing more than a village on the edge of Edo Bay when Ieyasu Tokugawa chose it as the site for a castle from which he, as shogun, could administer the country. The castle was of utmost importance because Japan had just emerged from a hundred years of civil war, and Ieyasu was determined that the power he had gained should not be wrested from him by antagonistic warlords. The castle, of course, had to be supplied with the necessities of everyday life, and thus a town had to be build where merchants and artisans could live. It is the planning and construction of Edo Castle and the town that would support it that lie at the core of this book. In fact, the construction of the city would be an ongoing process throughout its 260-year history, in the wake of repeated devastation by fire and earthquake and under the pressure of an ever-expanding population.Another aspect of the book concerns Edo's cultural life, which moved over time from classical modes dominated by the samurai to the more popular and lively forms favored by the merchants and artisans. Featured here are temples and shrines, festivals, bath houses, pleasure quarters, kabuki theaters, street gangs, the poet Basho, sumo wrestling, side shows, ukiyo-e prints, barbers, and much more.Each page of the main text of the book is illustrated, and it is this combination that makes the book both a reading and a visual delight.

    This work incorporates nearly twenty years of on-going research and draws on both new readings of primary sources and the most recent secondary scholarship.It overturns many of the stereotypes that have dominated views of the period. Friday analyzes Heian -, Kamakura- and Nambokucho-period warfare from five thematic angles. He examines the principles that justified armed conflict, the mechanisms used to raise and deploy armed forces, the weapons available to early medieval warriors, the means by which they obtained them, and the techniques and customs of battle.A thorough, accessible and informative review, this study highlights the complex casual relationships among the structures and sources of early medieval political power, technology, and the conduct of war.

    Detailing the way Japanese directors, scriptwriters, company officials, and bureaucrats colluded to produce films that supported the war effort, The Imperial Screen is a highly-readable account of the realities of cultural life in wartime Japan. Widely hailed as "epoch-making" by the Japanese press, it presents the most comprehensive survey yet published of "national policy" films, relating their montage and dramatic structures to the cultural currents, government policies, and propaganda goals of the era. Peter B. High’s treatment of the Japanese film world as a microcosm of the entire sphere of Japanese wartime culture demonstrates what happens when conscientious artists and intellectuals become enmeshed in a totalitarian regime.

    The contributors trace the renascence of the debate in the burst of cultural and political expression that has flowered in the past decade, with the rapid growth of local museums and memorials and the huge increase in popularity of distinctive Okinawan music and literature, as well as in political movements targeting both U.S. military bases and Japanese national policy on ecological, developmental, and equity grounds. A key strategy for claiming and shaping Okinawan identity is the mobilization of historical memory of the recent past, particularly of the violent subordination of Okinawan interests to those of the Japanese and American governments in war and occupation. Its intertwining themes of historical memory, nationality, ethnicity, and cultural conflict in contemporary society address central issues in anthropology, sociology, contemporary history, Asian Studies, international relations, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies. Contributions by: Matt Allen, Linda Isako Angst, Asato Eiko, Gerald Figal, Aaron Gerow, Laura Hein, Michael Molasky, Steve Rabson, James E. Roberson, Mark Selden, and Julia Yonetani.

    To avenge this, Mutsu bolstered his talent to become a man of “genius and learning in equal measure.” He joined the Kobe Naval Training Center founded by Katsu Kaishu and, later, Kaientai, a trading and shipping company and private navy founded and managed by Sakamoto Ryoma before the Meiji Restoration was accomplished. During the Meiji era, Mutsu fully exercised his extraordinary ability, including working to revise unequal treaties with Western powers as foreign minister. In his last days, he scrambled to end the First Sino-Japanese War; his efforts resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki with favorable terms for Japan. Mutsu also helped Japan ride out the subsequent wave of the Tripartite Intervention from Russia, France, and Germany. This book’s author, a career diplomat himself, traces the footsteps of modern Japan’s diplomacy by reviewing the philosophical and political journey of this extraordinary diplomat who protected the dignity of Japan as a modern nation throughout his professional life.

    Here is the story of John Manjiro, a 14-year-old boy from isolationist Japan, who was shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean with three other companions. Readers will be engrossed by the story of their rescue and the events that followed. Manjiro was raised as an American in Fairhaven, Massachusetts by Captain William Whitfield, and was not able to return to his homeland until he earned enough money to do so by joining the California gold rush. The first known visitor to the Western World, Manjiro was interrogated at length upon his return to Japan. His testimony was recorded in a manuscript called the Hyoson Kiryaku. DRIFTING TOWARD THE SOUTHWEST is the first English translation of that manuscript for a popular audience, complete with illustrations and maps from original copies of the manuscript housed in Fairhaven, Massachusett's Millicent Library and Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum.

    Building on the most recent scholarship from Japan, Taiwan, and the West, it takes a cross-cultural, multidisciplinary, comparative approach that considers the views of both colonizer and colonized as expressed in travel accounts and popular writing as well as scholarly treatments of the area's cultures and customs. Readers are introduced to the work of Japanese writers Hayashi Fumiko and Nakajima Atsushi, who spent time in the colonial South, and expatriate Nishikawa Mitsuru, who was raised and educated in Taiwan and tried to capture the essence of Taiwanese culture in his fictional and ethnographic writing. The effects of colonial language policy on the multilingual environment of Taiwan are discussed, as well as the role of language as a tool of imperialism and as a vehicle through which Japan's southern subjects expressed their identity--one that bridged Taiwanese and Japanese views of self.

    From the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago to the appearance of rice agriculture around 400 BC, Jomon people subsisted by hunting, fishing and gathering; but abundant and predictable sources of wild food enabled Jomon people to live in large, relatively permanent settlements, and to develop an elaborate material culture. In this book Kobayashi and Kaner explore thematic issues in Jomon archaeology: the appearance of sedentism in the Japanese archipelago and the nature of Jomon settlements; the invention of pottery and the development and meaning of regional pottery styles; social and spiritual life; as well as the astronomical significance of causeway monuments and the conceptualization of landscape in the Jomon period.

    The authors dispel the myths around the development of tea practice, dispute the fiction of the dominance of aesthetics over politics in tea, and demonstrate that writing history has always been an integral part of tea culture.

    Throughout the Edo era, the T�kaid� highway was the most important route of Japan and transportation was confined to foot travel. In 1889, the T�kaid� Railway was established, at first paralleling and eventually almost eliminating the use of the highway. During both periods, the T�kaid� was a popular topic of representation and was depicted in a variety of visual and literary media. After the installation of the railway in the Meiji era, the T�kaid� was presented as a landscape of progress, modernity and westernisation. Such representations were fundamental in shaping the T�kaid� and the realm of travelling in the collective consciousness of the Japanese people.

    It begins with a discussion of prehistoric dwellings and concludes with a description of contemporary trends in areas as diverse as country inns, underground malls, and love hotels. The intervening 12,000 years are analyzed in reference to major changes in architecture caused by Buddhist and indigenous influences, feudalism, and finally the influence of Western culture in the 19th century.