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Japanese anime has long fascinated the world, and its mythical heroes and dazzling colors increasingly influence popular culture genres in the West. Tze-yue G. Hu analyzes the “language-medium” of this remarkable expressive platform and its many socio-cultural dimensions from a distinctly Asian frame of reference, tracing its layers of concentric radiation from Japan throughout Asia. Her work, rooted in archival investigations, interviews with animators and producers in Japan as well as other Asian animation studios, and interdisciplinary research in linguistics and performance theory, shows how dialectical aspects of anime are linked to Japan’s unique experience of modernity and its cultural associations in Asia, including its reliance on low-wage outsourcing. Her study also provides English readers with insights on numerous Japanese secondary sources, as well as a number of original illustrations offered by animators and producers she interviewed.

In the decades between the two World Wars, Japan made a dramatic entry into the modern age, expanding its capital industries and urbanizing so quickly as to rival many long-standing Western industrial societies. How the Japanese made sense of the sudden transformation and the subsequent rise of mass culture is the focus of Harry Harootunian's fascinating inquiry into the problems of modernity. Here he examines the work of a generation of Japanese intellectuals who, like their European counterparts, saw modernity as a spectacle of ceaseless change that uprooted the dominant historical culture from its fixed values and substituted a culture based on fantasy and desire. Harootunian not only explains why the Japanese valued philosophical understandings of these events, often over sociological or empirical explanations, but also locates Japan's experience of modernity within a larger global process marked by both modernism and fascism. What caught the attention of Japanese thinkers was how the production of desire actually threatened historical culture. These intellectuals sought to \"overcome\" the materialism and consumerism associated with the West, particularly the United States. They proposed versions of a modernity rooted in cultural authenticity and aimed at infusing meaning into everyday life, whether through art, memory, or community. Harootunian traces these ideas in the works of Yanagita Kunio, Tosaka Jun, Gonda Yasunosuke, and Kon Wajiro, among others, and relates their arguments to those of such European writers as George Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Georges Bataille. Harootunian shows that Japanese and European intellectuals shared many of the same concerns, and also stresses that neither Japan's involvement with fascism nor its late entry into the capitalist, industrial scene should cause historians to view its experience of modernity as an oddity. The author argues that strains of fascism ran throughout most every country in Europe and in many ways resulted from modernizing trends in general. This book, written by a leading scholar of modern Japan, amounts to a major reinterpretation of the nature of Japan's modernity.

This book explores the crisis of cultural identity which has assaulted Asian countries since Western countries began to have a profound impact on Asia in the nineteenth century. Confronted by Western 'civilization' and by 'modernity', Asian countries have been compelled to rethink their identity, and to consider how they should relate to Western 'civilization' and 'modernity'. The result, the author argues, has been a redefining by Asian countries of their own character as nations, and an adaptation of 'civilization' and 'modernity' to their own special conditions. Asian nations, the author contends, have thereby engaged with the West and with modernity, but on their own terms, occasionally, and in various inconsistent ways in which they could assert a sense of difference, forcing changes in the Western concept of civilization. Drawing on postmodern theory, the Kyoto School, Confucian and other traditional Asian thought, and the actual experiences of Asian countries, especially China and Japan, the author demonstrates that Asian countries' redefining of the concept of civilization in the course of their quest for an appropriate postmodern national identity is every bit as key a part of 'the rise of Asia' as economic growth or greater international political activity.

This study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the United States, Russia, Japan, and China. The convergence-divergence-crossvergence (CDC) framework was used as a theoretical framework for the study, while the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) was used to operationalize our investigation of managerial work values across these four countries. The findings largely support the crossvergence perspective, while also confirming the role of national culture. Implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence-divergence-crossvergence of values, as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture.

Shunsuke Tsurumi, one of Japan’s most distinguished contemporary philosophers, continues his study of the intellectual and social history of modern Japan with this penetrating analysis of popular culture in the post-war years. Japanese manga (comics), manzai (dialogues), television, advertising and popular songs are the medium for a revealing examination of the many contradictory forces at work beneath the surface of an apparently uniform and universal culture. The author argues that the iconography of these popular forms has deep and significant implication for the development of Japanese national life in the post-growth years that lie ahead. 1. Occupation: The American Way of Life As An Imposed Model 2. Occupation: On the Sense of Justice 3. Comics in Post-war Japan 4. Vaudeville Acts 5. Legends of Common Culture 6. Trends in Popular Songs since the 1960s 7. Ordinary Citizens and Citizens’ Movements 8. Comments on Patterns of Life 9. A Comment on Guidebooks on Japan

This book explores how issues of ethics in war and warfare have been treated by major ethical traditions of Asia. It opens a discussion about whether there are universal standards in the ideologies of warfare between the major religious traditions of the world. While the chapters are written by specialists in Asian cultures, some of the conceptual apparatus is drawn from the scholarly discourse on just war, developed in the study of the ethical tradition of Christianity. Taking a comparative approach, the book looks at six different Asian religious, philosophical and political traditions: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, China and Japan; and is organized according to geography. This innovative approach opens a new field of research on war and ideology, and extends the debate on modern warfare, universalism and human rights. Torkel Brekke completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford in 1999 and is currently Associate Professor at the Institute of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. His primary research interest is the relationship between religion and politics. Previous publications include Religious Motivation and the Origins of Buddhism (also published by Routledge) and Makers of Modern Indian Religions . Foreword Torkel Brekke Introduction: Comparative Ethics and the Crucible of War G. Scott Davis Part 1: West Asia 1. The Ethic of War in Judaism Norman Solomon 2. Islamic Tradition and the Justice of War John Kelsay Part 2: South Asia 3. Between Prudence and Heroism: Ethics of War in the Hindu Tradition Torkel Brekke 4. In Defense of Dharma: Just War Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka Tessa Bartholomeusz Part 3: East Asia 5. Might Makes Right: Just War and Just Warfare in Early Medieval Japan Karl Friday 6. The Just War in Early China Mark E. Lewis Afterword: Ethics across Borders Henrik Syse

This collection charts the terrain of contemporary Japanese animation, one of the most explosive forms of visual culture to emerge at the crossroads of transnational cultural production in the last twenty-five years. The essays offer bold and insightful engagement with animé's concerns with gender identity, anxieties about body mutation and technological monstrosity, and apocalyptic fantasies of the end of history. The contributors dismantle the distinction between 'high' and 'low' culture and offer compelling arguments for the value and importance of the study of animé and popular culture as a key link in the translation from the local to the global.

Residual orality in ancient Japan is explored here through the little-known \"Womë-no\" poem in \"Harima Fudoki,\" recorded c. A.D. 714. Through it, we examine the use of punning, and thereby recognize three main points hitherto unnoticed. The first is that the kō/otsu distinctions of Old Japanese were largely ignored for the purpose of punning. Secondly, punning could involve mental substitution of a synonym to evoke the relevant thought association. Thirdly, we discover that puns could hang on chiastic reversal. It is argued that all three of these devices are features of residual orality in ancient Japan, and it is demonstrated that they could be used in combination to convey to the audience an extremely cryptic or esoteric message. In short, this paper not only provides a deeper analysis of the \"Womë-no\" poem than ever before, but produces new and original evidence about residual orality in ancient Japan.

Addresses the suitability of the term \"revolution,\" the national versus transnational focus, and characterizations of the industrial revolution. Considers a late-development model of industrialization and its application to East Asia. Focuses on issues in Japanese industrialization, such as the role of the Japanese government, militarism and empire, and the role of culture. (CMK)