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This anthology is the first to survey the full range of modern Japanese drama and make available Japan's best and most representative twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century works in one volume. It opens with a comprehensive introduction to Meiji-period drama and follows with six chronological sections: \"The Age of Taisho Drama\"; The Tsukiji Little Theater and Its Aftermath\"; \"Wartime and Postwar Drama\"; \"The 1960s and Underground Theater\"; \"The 1980s and Beyond\"; and \"Popular Theater,\" providing a complete history of modern Japanese theater for students, scholars, instructors, and dramatists. The collection features a mix of original and previously published translations of works, among them plays by such writers as Masamune Hakucho (The Couple Next Door), Enchi Fumiko (Restless Night in Late Spring), Morimoto Kaoru (A Woman's Life), Abe Kobo (The Man Who Turned into a Stick), Kara Juro (Two Women), Terayama Shuji (Poison Boy), Noda Hideki (Poems for Sale), and Mishima Yukio (The Sardine Seller's Net of Love). Leading translators include Donald Keene, J. Thomas Rimer, M. Cody Poulton, John K. Gillespie, Mari Boyd, and Brian Powell. Each section features an introduction to the developments and character of the period, notes on the plays' productions, and photographs of their stage performances. The volume complements any study of modern Japanese literature and modern drama in China, Korea, or other Asian or contemporary Western nations.

This title was first published in 1988: In this book the author has translated five postwar experimental Japanese plays and recreated the artistic, social and spiritual milieu in which they were created. He describes the turning point in Japanese thinking about the nature and limitations of a Western-oriented modern culture, and the creation of \"underground\" theatres which in which evolved a new mythology of history. Professor Goodman sees these developments as an interplay between personal and political (ie revolutionary) salvation. The first biographical dictionary in any Western language devoted solely to Chinese women, Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women is the product of years of research, translation, and writing by scores of China scholars from around the world. Volume II: Twentieth Century includes a far greater range of women than would have been previously possible because of the enormous amount of historical material and scholarly research that has become available recently. They include scientists, businesswomen, sportswomen, military officers, writers, scholars, revolutionary heroines, politicians, musicians, opera stars, film stars, artists, educators, nuns, and more.

This book endeavours to unravel the complicated skeins of Japanese theatre in the modern period and offers an appreciation of the richness of choice of presentational and representational theatre forms.Since the end of world War II there has been continuing but different conflict between the major theatrical genres. Kabuki continues to defend its ground successfully, but the 'new drama' (shingeki) became firmly established in its own right in the 1960s. It was a vigorous and exuberant 'underground' theatre which exploited anything and everything in the Japanese and western theatre traditions.Now, thirty years on, they too have been superseded. The youth theatre of the 1980s and 90s has thrown aside the concerns of the angry underground and developed a fast-moving bewilderingly kaleidoscopic drama of breath-taking energy.

Samuel L. Leiter's Kabuki at the Crossroads is a thorough account of Japan's most famous traditional theatre as it struggled to survive in the maelstrom of post-Occupation Japan's rapidly changing entertainment world.

This book sheds light on Japan's underground theatre in a time of its most intense, creative and original productions, viz. 1960-2000, investigating the interrelationship of aesthetics and politics in the period 1960-2000. The first history of avant-garde theatre in Japan.

America's Japan and Japan's Performing Artsstudies the images and myths that have shaped the reception of Japan-related theater, music, and dance in the United States since the 1950s. Soon after World War II, visits by Japanese performing artists to the United States emerged as a significant category of American cultural-exchange initiatives aimed at helping establish and build friendly ties with Japan. Barbara E. Thornbury explores how \"Japan\" and \"Japanese culture\" have been constructed, reconstructed, and transformed in response to the hundreds of productions that have taken place over the past sixty years in New York, the main entry point and defining cultural nexus in the United States for the global touring market in the performing arts. The author's transdisciplinary approach makes the book appealing to those in the performing arts studies, Japanese studies, and cultural studies.

The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Michael A. Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security, drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources. Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan.

This remarkable book examines the complex history of Japanese colonial and postcolonial interactions with Korea, particularly in matters of cultural policy. E. Taylor Atkins focuses on past and present Japanese fascination with Korean culture as he reassesses colonial anthropology, heritage curation, cultural policy, and Korean performance art in Japanese mass media culture. Atkins challenges the prevailing view that imperial Japan demonstrated contempt for Koreans through suppression of Korean culture. In his analysis, the Japanese preoccupation with Koreana provided the empire with a poignant vision of its own past, now lost--including communal living and social solidarity--which then allowed Japanese to grieve for their former selves. At the same time, the specific objects of Japan's gaze--folk theater, dances, shamanism, music, and material heritage--became emblems of national identity in postcolonial Korea.

Most Americans believe that the Second World War ended because the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan forced it to surrender.Five Days in Augustboldly presents a different interpretation: that the military did not clearly understand the atomic bomb's revolutionary strategic potential, that the Allies were almost as stunned by the surrender as the Japanese were by the attack, and that not only had experts planned and fully anticipated the need for a third bomb, they were skeptical about whether the atomic bomb would work at all. With these ideas, Michael Gordin reorients the historical and contemporary conversation about the A-bomb and World War II. Gordin posits that although the bomb clearly brought with it a new level of destructive power, strategically it was regarded by decision-makers simply as a new conventional weapon, a bigger firebomb. To lend greater understanding to the thinking behind its deployment, Gordin takes the reader to the island of Tinian, near Guam, the home base for the bombing campaign, and the location from which the anticipated third atomic bomb was to be delivered. He also details how Americans generated a new story about the origins of the bomb after surrender: that the United States knew in advance that the bomb would end the war and that its destructive power was so awesome no one could resist it. Five Days in Augustexplores these and countless other legacies of the atomic bomb in a glaring new light. Daring and iconoclastic, it will result in far-reaching discussions about the significance of the A-bomb, about World War II, and about the moral issues they have spawned.

The first in-depth scholarly study in English of the Japanese performance medium kamishibai, Sharalyn Orbaugh's Propaganda Performed illuminates the vibrant street culture of 1930s Japan as well as the visual and narrative rhetoric of Japanese propaganda in World War II. Emerging from Japan's cities in the late 1920s, kamishibai rapidly transformed from a cheap amusement associated with poverty into the most popular form of juvenile entertainment, eclipsing even film and manga. By the time kamishibai died as a living medium in the 1970s it had left behind indelible influences on popular culture forms such as manga and anime, as well as on avant-garde cinema, theater, and art.From 1932 to 1945, however, kamishibai also became a vehicle for propaganda messages aimed not primarily at children, but at adults. A mixture of script, image, and performance, the medium was particularly suited to conveying populist, emotionally compelling messages to audiences of all classes, ages, and literacy levels, making it a crucial tool in the government's efforts to mobilize the domestic populace in Japan and to pacify the inhabitants of the empire's colonies and occupied territories. With seven complete translations of wartime plays, over 300 color illustrations from hard-to-access kamishibai play cards, and photographs of prewar performances, this study constitutes an archive of wartime history in addition to providing a detailed analysis of the rhetoric of political persuasion.