Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
600
result(s) for
"Modern Japanese History"
Sort by:
The Challenge of Studying the Pacific as a “Global Asia”: Problematizing Deep-Rooted Institutional Hindrances for Bridging Asian Studies and Asian American Studies
This essay aims to address the structural barriers that deter the study of “Global Asias”—or even something smaller in scale, the study of the “Pacific”—in the context of the institutional split between Asian studies and Asian American studies.
Journal Article
Rethinking materialism and Asia: Miki Kiyoshi and Hiromatsu Wataru
This paper argues that the interwar Japanese Marxists Miki Kiyoshi and more contemporary Hiromatsu Wataru each moved towards developing this perspective beyond simple distinctions between idealism, which is confined to concepts, and materialism, conceived as presupposing that ideas are determined by matter. Japanese Marxism was in a unique place to affect such a synthesis because of the existence of Kyoto School philosophy, with whom both Miki and Hiromatsu were associated. The proponents of the Kyoto School combined Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives, which had the aim of criticizing modernity. Miki Kiyoshi and other members of the Kyoto School eventually supported Japan's wartime effort, which delegitimized their concerns about modernity during the postwar. However, in postwar Japan, Hiromatsu developed a creative reading of Marx's materialism and in the 1994 surprised everyone by advocating a pan-Asianist critique of modernity. Hiromatsu suggested that despite problems that Miki and the Kyoto School represented, one had to grasp the rational kernel, which could save Marxism from slipping into an equally dangerous modernization theory. This task remains for us today when the dystopia of globalized capitalism seems to have become a reality that threatens the survival of our planet.
Journal Article
Japan : the paradox of harmony
\"Following a crushing defeat in World War II, Japan rose like a phoenix from the literal ashes to become a model of modernity and success, for decades Asia's premier economic giant. Yet it remains a nation hobbled by rigid gender roles, protectionist policies, and a defensive, inflexible corporate system that has helped bring about political and economic stagnation. The unique social cohesion that enabled Japan to cope with adversity and develop swiftly has also encouraged isolationism, given rise to an arrogant and inflexible bureaucracy, and prevented the country from addressing difficult issues. Its culture of hard work--in fact, overwork--is legendary, but a declining population and restrictions on opportunity threaten the nation's future. Keiko Hirata and Mark Warschauer have combined thoroughly researched deep analysis with engaging anecdotal material in this enlightening portrait of modern-day Japan, creating an honest and accessible critique that addresses issues from the economy and politics to immigration, education, and the increasing alienation of Japanese youth\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Sociological Analysis of Ekiden, Japan’s Long-Distance Relay Road Race
This paper aims to refer to the long-distance relay road race known as ekiden, which is a Japanese invention in the history of modern sports, from a wider sociological perspective. This unique sport, which has seldom been practiced in countries other than Japan, has been widely enjoyed and supported by a large number of Japanese people regardless of sex as a competitive team sport among high-school, university, and even company teams. By looking back on the developing history of this sport, I would like to shed light on the process of state formation in modern Japan as well as on a close relationship between nationalism and morality, an incentive to form the spirit of the nation, by using Norbert Elias’s figurational theory. As a conclusion, I would also like to refer to the possibility of other nations’ finding an interest in ekiden not only as an international competitive sport but also as a peaceful collective sporting event for the masses in the future. For that purpose, two examples are briefly introduced here; one is the 2018 Adecco Brussels Ekiden and the other the Koko Guam Road Race.
Journal Article
Tosaka Jun : a critical reader
Tosaka Jun (1900–1945) was one of modern Japan's most unique and important critics of capitalism, the emperor system, imperialism, and everyday life in wartime Japan. This collection of translations contains some of Tosaka's most important essays and original articles on Tosaka.
eBook
Fit to Be Citizens?
Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Fit to Be Citizens? demonstrates how both science and public health shaped the meaning of race in the early twentieth century. Through a careful examination of the experiences of Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, Natalia Molina illustrates the many ways local health officials used complexly constructed concerns about public health to demean, diminish, discipline, and ultimately define racial groups. She shows how the racialization of Mexican Americans was not simply a matter of legal exclusion or labor exploitation, but rather that scientific discourses and public health practices played a key role in assigning negative racial characteristics to the group. The book skillfully moves beyond the binary oppositions that usually structure works in ethnic studies by deploying comparative and relational approaches that reveal the racialization of Mexican Americans as intimately associated with the relative historical and social positions of Asian Americans, African Americans, and whites. Its rich archival grounding provides a valuable history of public health in Los Angeles, living conditions among Mexican immigrants, and the ways in which regional racial categories influence national laws and practices. Molina's compelling study advances our understanding of the complexity of racial politics, attesting that racism is not static and that different groups can occupy different places in the racial order at different times.
eBook
Race for empire
Race for Empire offers a profound and challenging reinterpretation of nationalism, racism, and wartime mobilization during the Asia-Pacific war. In parallel case studies—of Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States Army and of Koreans recruited or drafted into the Japanese military—T. Fujitani examines the U.S. and Japanese empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations while waging total war. Fujitani probes governmental policies and analyzes representations of these soldiers—on film, in literature, and in archival documents—to reveal how characteristics of racism, nationalism, capitalism, gender politics, and the family changed on both sides. He demonstrates that the United States and Japan became increasingly alike over the course of the war, perhaps most tellingly in their common attempts to disavow racism even as they reproduced it in new ways and forms.
eBook
The Ends of Meter in Modern Japanese Poetry
In The Ends of Meter in Modern
Japanese Poetry , Scott Mehl analyzes the
complex response of Meiji-era Japanese poets and readers to the
challenge introduced by European verse and the resulting crisis in
Japanese poetry. Amidst fierce competition for literary
prestige on the national and international stage, poets and critics
at the time recognized that the character of Japanese poetic
culture was undergoing a fundamental transformation, and the stakes
were high: the future of modern Japanese verse.
Mehl documents the creation of new Japanese poetic forms,
tracing the first invention of Japanese free verse and its
subsequent disappearance. He examines the impact of the acclaimed
and reviled shintaishi , a new poetic form invented for
translating European-language verse and eventually supplanted by
the reintroduction of free verse as a Western import. The Ends
of Meter in Modern Japanese Poetry draws on materials written
in German, Spanish, English, and French, recreating the global
poetry culture within which the most ambitious Meiji-era Japanese
poets vied for position.
eBook