Category: Japan

Green Spaces in Modern Japan

Posted on by stephchun

ParkscapesJapan today protects one-seventh of its land surface in parks, which are visited by well over a billion people each year. Parkscapes: Green Spaces in Modern Japan, by Thomas R. H. Havens, analyzes the origins, development, and distinctive features of these public spaces. Havens shows how revolutionary officials in the 1870s seized private properties and converted them into public parks for educating and managing citizens in the new emperor-sanctioned state. Rebuilding Tokyo and Yokohama after the earthquake and fires of 1923 spurred the spread of urban parklands both in the capital and other cities. According to Havens, the growth of suburbs, the national mobilization of World War II, and the post-1945 American occupation helped speed the creation of more urban parks, setting the stage for vast increases in public green spaces during Japan’s golden age of affluence from the 1960s through the 1980s.

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3477-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

The Life and Times of Shimazaki Toson

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The Kiso RoadWilliam E. Naff, the distinguished scholar of Japanese literature widely known and highly regarded for his eloquent translations of the writings of Shimazaki Toson (1872–1943), spent the last years of his life writing a full-length biography of Toson. Virtually completed at the time of his death, The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Toson provides a rich and colorful account of this canonic novelist who, along with Natsume Soseki and Mori Ogai, formed the triumvirate of writers regarded as giants in Meiji Japan, all three of whom helped establish the parameters of modern Japanese literature. Professor Naff’s biography skillfully places Toson in the context of his times and discusses every aspect of his career and personal life, as well as introducing in detail a number of his important but as yet untranslated works.

“The Kiso Road sets Toson’s long and eventful life in the context of its historical and cultural moment, providing a depth of coverage that cannot be matched by any of the existing English-language books on Toson. As Naff argues, Toson is simultaneously an extraordinary and an ordinary figure, and tracing through his career provides a useful window onto an entire era of Japanese history. This is an important and authoritative book, an original contribution, and the culmination of a life’s work.” —Michael Bourdaghs, University of Chicago

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3218-6 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Also available: William Naff’s award-winning translation of Toson’s classic novel of Meiji Japan, Before the Dawn

Waste, Environment, Japan

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Troubled NaturesWhat does “environment” really mean in the complex, non-Western milieu of present-day Tokyo? How can anthropology contribute to the technical discussions and quantitative measures typically found in environmental studies? Author Peter Wynn Kirby explores these questions through a deep cultural analysis of waste in contemporary Japan. His parameters are intentionally broad—encompassing ideas of “nature,” attitudes toward hygiene, notions of health and illness, problems with vermin and toxic waste, processes of social exclusion, and reproductive threats. Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan concludes that how surroundings are conceived, invoked, and enacted is subjective, highly contextual, and under continual negotiation—with suggestive implications for anthropology, social science, and environmental studies generally.

“Kirby’s long-term ethnographic study takes the unlikely-sounding subject of waste (in all its forms) to a fascinating depth, demonstrating the sociocultural complexity of environmental issues, and the crucial contribution that an anthropological study such as this can make to the broader field. Here is a novel way to understand the changing nature of contemporary Japan, through insights into the lives of residents of its enormous capital city and their struggle to eliminate environmental pollution and maintain the purity on which Japan has long prided itself.” —Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3428-9 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Reminiscences of a Century

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From OkinawaBetween 1889 and 1940 more than 40,000 Okinawan contract laborers emigrated to plantations in Hawaii, Brazil, the Philippines, and Peru. In 1912 seventeen-year-old Hana Kaneshi accompanied her husband and brother to South America and dreamed of returning home in two years’ time a wealthy young woman. Edited by her daughter Akiko, From Okinawa to the Americas, Hana’s richly detailed memoir, is a rare, first-hand account of the life of a female Okinawan immigrant in the New World. It spans nearly a century, from Hana’s early life in a small village not long after the Ryukyu Kingdom’s annexation to Japan; to a sugar plantation in Peru and its capital, Lima; to her dangerous trek through Mexico and the California desert to enter the U.S. and start a new life, this time in the Imperial Valley and finally Los Angeles. Hana’s story comes full circle when she returns briefly, after forty-seven years, to Okinawa during the postwar American Occupation.

“Hana Yamagawa’s book is full of stories of disappointment, loss, and struggle. But it is also inspiring: Hana is high-spirited and stubborn and truly a memorable character. Hers is a remarkable tale, told with honesty.”—Edith Kaneshiro, Department of History, National University of Singapore

Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Intercultural Studies
October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3551-4 / $25.00 (PAPER)

A Hermeneutics Reader

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Japan's FramesIn Japan’s Frames of Meaning: A Hermeneutics Reader, Michael F. Marra identifies interpretative concepts central to discussions of hermeneutical practices in Japan and presents English translations of works on basic hermeneutics by major Japanese thinkers. Discussions of Japanese thought tend to be centered on key Western terms in light of which Japanese texts are examined; alternatively, a few Buddhist concepts are presented as counterparts of these Western terms. Marra concentrates on Japanese philosophers and thinkers who have mediated these two extremes, bringing their knowledge of Western thought to bear on philosophical reinterpretations of Buddhist terms that are, thus, presented in secularized form.

Michael Marra is the author or editor of Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan, Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader, A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, Kuki Shuzo: A Philosopher’s Poetry and Poetics, and The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey.

October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3460-9 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

On the Kiso Road with Toson

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Kiso RoadThis month’s issue of Smithsonian magazine features an article by Thomas Swick on exploring Japan’s historic Kiso Road on foot. Swick is advised by his travel companion, Japan scholar Bill Wilson, to do some preliminary reading and he suggests Before the Dawn, Shimazaki Toson’s classic novel of life on the Kiso Road in the years following Perry’s arrival in 1853. Read the article and view the accompanying photos (including the one shown here) by Chiara Goia.

Before the DawnBefore the Dawn, translated by William Naff, was awarded the 1987 Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Through the life of the novel’s protagonist, Aoyama Hanzo (based on Toson’s father), a Kiso post official and rural intellectual, the novel depicts the political and social upheavals of mid-19th-century Japan.

“No other book known to me captures the feel of the Meiji period even nearly so well.” —Washington Post

“A vivid demonstration of the richness and ferment of Japan’s intellectual life.” —The New Yorker

“In Toson’s earnest and ambitious attempt to tell the story of one man’s tragedy set against the huge backdrop of the Meiji Restoration, there is an element of nobility and grandeur. And in Naff’s translation . . . this comes through.” —New York Times Book Review

“An impressive revelation of Japanese history and culture from a Japanese perspective.” —Asiaweek

UH Press will publish the definitive English-language biography of Toson, William Naff’s The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Toson, in January 2011.

Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan

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Into the LightInto the Light: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan, edited by Melissa L. Wender, is the first anthology to introduce the fiction of Japan’s Korean community (Zainichi Koreans) to the English-speaking world. The collection brings together works by many of the most important Zainichi Korean writers of the twentieth century, from the colonial-era “Into the Light” (1939) by Kim Sa-ryang to “Full House” (1997) by Yu Miri, one of contemporary Japan’s most acclaimed and popular authors.

“This groundbreaking anthology is urgently needed. It will be of particular interest to the growing numbers of English-language readers wanting to know about the experiences of migrants and minorities. The high-quality translations will also be useful in the classroom in a number of fields including Japanese literature and history, comparative literature, gender studies, and diaspora studies.” —Steve Rabson, professor emeritus, Brown University

October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3490-6 / $22.00 (PAPER)

First in Paperback: Neither Monk Nor Layman

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Neither Monk nor LaymanBuddhism comes in many forms, but in Japan it stands apart from all the rest in one most striking way—the monks get married. In Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism, the most comprehensive study of this topic in any language, Richard M. Jaffe addresses the emergence of an openly married clergy as a momentous change in the history of modern Japanese Buddhism. He demonstrates, in clear and engaging prose, that this shift was not an easy one for Japanese Buddhists. Yet the transformation that began in the early Meiji period (1868–1912)—when monks were ordered by government authorities to marry, to have children, and to eat meat—today extends to all the country’s Buddhist denominations.

“First-rate. Jaffe’s research is utterly original; virtually none of the issues covered have been seriously investigated in any other Western-language study, and there are precious few Japanese secondary studies in the area. The book is well organized, well balanced, and a delight to read.” —Robert Sharf, University of California, Berkeley

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3527-9 / $25.00 (PAPER)

New Translation of Ise monogatari

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The Ise StoriesIse monogatari is one of classical Japan’s most important texts. It influenced other literary court romances like The Tale of Genji and inspired artists, playwrights, and poets throughout Japanese history and to the present day. In a series of 125 loosely connected episodes, the Ise tells the story of a famous lover, Captain Ariwara no Narihira (825–880), and his romantic encounters with women throughout Japan. Each episode centers on an exchange of love poems designed to demonstrate wit, sensitivity, and “courtliness.”

In The Ise Stories, Joshua Mostow and Royall Tyler present a fresh, contemporary translation of this classic work, together with a substantial commentary for each episode.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3451-7 / $19.00 (PAPER)

Zen Sand Now Available in Paperback

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Zen Sand

“[Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice, by Victor Sogen Hori,] is a thorough and excellent piece of scholarship that will, I suspect, be the standard English-language work on jakugo for many decades to come. No serious student or practitioner of Zen will want to be without a copy.” —Religious Studies Review

“The best scholarly book on actual Zen practice in Japan to appear in recent decades.” —Journal of Chinese Religions

“Not only a well-documented and meticulously researched, comprehensive sourcebook. . . . It also succeeds superbly in setting the record straight and clarifies some widespread but misguided notions about Zen.” —Japanese Journal of Religious Studies

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3507-1 / $32.00 (PAPER)
Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture

Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama

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A Beggar’s Art
In the opening decades of the twentieth century in Japan, practically every major author wrote plays that were published and performed. The plays were seen not simply as the emergence of a new literary form but as a manifestation of modernity itself, transforming the stage into a site for the exploration of new ideas and ways of being. A Beggar’s Art: Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama, 1900-1930, is the first book in English to examine the full range of early twentieth-century Japanese drama. Accompanying his study, M. Cody Poulton provides his translations of representative one-act plays. Poulton looks at the emergence of drama as a modern literary and artistic form and chronicles the creation of modern Japanese drama as a reaction to both traditional (particularly kabuki) dramaturgy and European drama. Translations and productions of the latter became the model for the so-called New Theater (shingeki), where the question of how to be both modern and Japanese at the same time was hotly contested.

June 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3452-4 / $29.00 (PAPER)

Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

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Embodying BelongingEmbodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan, by Taku Suzuki, is the first full-length study of a Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, hundreds of Bolivian-born ethnic Okinawans have left the Colonia in the last two decades and moved to Japanese cities, such as Yokohama, to become manual laborers in construction and manufacturing industries.

Based on the author’s multisited field research on the work, education, and community lives of Okinawans in the Colonia and Yokohama, this ethnography challenges the unidirectional model of assimilation and acculturation commonly found in immigration studies. In its vivid depiction of the transnational experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians, it argues that transnational Okinawan-Bolivians underwent the various racialization processes—in which they were portrayed by non-Okinawan Bolivians living in the Colonia and native-born Japanese mainlanders in Yokohama and self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves—as the physical embodiment of a generalized and naturalized “culture” of Japan, Okinawa, or Bolivia.

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3344-2 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

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