Kindai Nihon Kanry Shi

This magisterial history of Japanese nationalism reveals nationalism to be a contested and pluralistic practice that seeks to center the people in political life. It presents a wealth of primary source material on how Japanese themselves have understood their national identity.

Japanese industry is the envy of the world for its efficient and humane management practices. Yet, as William Tsutsui argues, the origins and implications of "Japanese-style management" are poorly understood. Contrary to widespread belief, Japan's acclaimed strategies are not particularly novel or even especially Japanese. Tsutsui traces the roots of these practices to Scientific Management, or Taylorism, an American concept that arrived in Japan at the turn of the century. During subsequent decades, this imported model was embraced--and ultimately transformed--in Japan's industrial workshops. Imitation gave rise to innovation as Japanese managers sought a "revised" Taylorism that combined mechanistic efficiency with respect for the humanity of labor. Tsutsui's groundbreaking study charts Taylorism's Japanese incarnation, from the "efficiency movement" of the 1920s, through Depression-era "rationalization" and wartime mobilization, up to postwar "productivity" drives and quality-control campaigns. Taylorism became more than a management tool; its spread beyond the factory was a potent intellectual template in debates over economic growth, social policy, and political authority in modern Japan. Tsutsui's historical and comparative perspectives reveal the centrality of Japanese Taylorism to ongoing discussions of Japan's government-industry relations and the evolution of Fordist mass production. He compels us to rethink what implications Japanese-style management has for Western industries, as well as the future of Japan itself.

Every serious student of Japanese needs a reliable and user-friendly dictionary in their collection. Tuttle Concise Japanese Dictionary, now with 30% more content, is a completely updated dictionary designed for students and business people who are living in Japan and using the Japanese language on a daily basis. Its greatest advantage is that it contains recent idiomatic expressions which have become popular in the past several years and which are not found in other competing dictionaries. The dictionary has been fully updated with the addition of recent vocabulary relating to computers, mobile phones, social media and the Internet. Other special features that set this dictionary apart include: Over 25,000 words and expressions including idioms and slang. User-friendly layout with main entries in color. Complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese sections. Romanized forms and the Japanese script are given for all Japanese words. A guide to pronunciation helps the user to pronounce Japanese words correctly. Different senses of each word are distinguished by multiple definitions.

Born of Japan's cultural encounter with Western entertainment media, manga (comic books or graphic novels) and anime (animated films) are two of the most universally recognized forms of contemporary mass culture. Because they tell stories through visual imagery, they vault over language barriers. Well suited to electronic transmission and distributed by Japan's globalized culture industry, they have become a powerful force in both the mediascape and the marketplace.This volume brings together an international group of scholars from many specialties to probe the richness and subtleties of these deceptively simple cultural forms. The contributors explore the historical, cultural, sociological, and religious dimensions of manga and anime, and examine specific sub-genres, artists, and stylistics. The book also addresses such topics as spirituality, the use of visual culture by Japanese new religious movements, Japanese Goth, nostalgia and Japanese pop, "cute" (kawali) subculture and comics for girls, and more. With illustrations throughout, it is a rich source for all scholars and fans of manga and anime as well as students of contemporary mass culture or Japanese culture and civilization.

"This carefully researched and original monograph describes the lives and thoughts of a series of women who sought fairer economic, social and political roles for women during Japan's first half-century of modernization...It is of interest not only to students of feminism but also to anyone who wishes to understand modern Japan." [Choice].

In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions—one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines. Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia's future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalist elites in the colonial capitals of Rangoon and Manila. Exploring Japanese visions for international order in the face of an ever-changing geopolitical situation, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere explores wartime Japan's desire to shape and control its imperial future while its colonies attempted to do the same. At Japan's zenith as an imperial power, the Sphere represented a plan for regional domination; by the end of the war, it had been recast as the epitome of cooperative internationalism. In the end, the Sphere could not survive wartime defeat, and Yellen's lucidly written account reveals much about the desires of Japan as an imperial and colonial power, as well as the ways in which the subdued colonies in Burma and the Philippines jockeyed for agency and a say in the future of the region.