Mirror Of Modernity

This collection of essays challenges the notion that Japan's present cultural identity is the simple legacy of its pre-modern and insular past. Scholars examine "age-old" Japanese cultural practices and show these to be largely creations of the modern era.

The Distorting Mirror analyzes the multiple and complex ways in which urban Chinese subjects saw themselves interacting with the new visual culture that emerged during the turbulent period between the 1880s and the 1930s. The media and visual forms examined include lithography, photography, advertising, film, and theatrical performances. Urbanites actively engaged with and enjoyed this visual culture, which was largely driven by the subjective desire for the empty promises of modernity—promises comprised of such abstract and fleeting concepts as new, exciting, and fashionable. Detailing and analyzing the trajectories of development of various visual representations, Laikwan Pang emphasizes their interactions. In doing so, she demonstrates that visual modernity was not only a combination of independent cultural phenomena, but also a partially coherent sociocultural discourse whose influences were seen in different and collective parts of the culture. The work begins with an overall historical account and theorization of a new lithographic pictorial culture developing at the end of the nineteenth century and an examination of modernity’s obsession with the investigation of the real. Subsequent chapters treat the fascination with the image of the female body in the new visual culture; entertainment venues in which this culture unfolded and was performed; how urbanites came to terms with and interacted with the new reality; and the production and reception of images, the dynamics between these two being a theme explored throughout the book. Modernity, as the author shows, can be seen as spectacle. At the same time, she demonstrates that, although the excessiveness of this spectacle captivated the modern subject, it did not completely overwhelm or immobilize those who engaged with it. After all, she argues, they participated in and performed with this ephemeral visual culture in an attempt to come to terms with their own new, modern self.

A Literary mirror is the first English-language work to comprehensively analyse Indonesian-language literature from Bali from a literary and cultural viewpoint. It covers the period from 1920 to 2000. This is an extremely rich field for research into the ways Balinese view their culture and how they respond to external cultural forces. This work complements the large number of existing studies of Bali and its history, anthropology, traditional literature, and the performing arts.

Karatani Kojin is one of Japan's leading critics. In his work as a theoretician, he has described Modernity as have few others; he has re-evaluated the literature of the entire Meiji period and beyond. As one critic has said, Karatani's thought "has had a profound effect on the way we formulate the questions we ask about modern literature and culture ... [his] argument is compelling, moving even, and in the end the reader comes away with a different understanding not only of modern Japanese literature but of modern Japan itself." Among the many authors discussed are Soseki Natsume, Doppo Kunikida, Katai Tayama, and Shoyo Tsubouchi.

Modern Japan's repressed anxieties, fears and hopes come to the surface in the fantastic. A close analysis of fantasy fiction, film and comics reveals the ambivalence felt by many Japanese towards the success story of the nation in the twentieth century. The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature explores the dark side to Japanese literature and Japanese society. It takes in the nightmarish future depicted in the animated film masterpiece, Akira, and the pastoral dream worlds created by Japan's Nobel Prize winning author Oe Kenzaburo. A wide range of fantasists, many discussed here in English for the first time, form the basis for a ground-breaking analysis of utopias, dystopias, the disturbing relationship between women, sexuality and modernity, and the role of the alien in the fantastic.

Considering Castles and Tenshu -- Modern Castles on the Margins -- Overview: "from Feudalism to the Edge of Space" -- From Feudalism to Empire -- Castles and the Transition to the Imperial State -- Castles in the Global Early Modern World -- Castles and the Fall of the Tokugawa -- Useless Reminders of the Feudal Past -- Remilitarizing Castles in the Meiji Period -- Considering Heritage in Early Meiji -- Castles and the Imperial House -- The Discovery of Castles, 1877-1912 -- Making Space Public -- Civilian Castles and Daimyo Buyback -- Castles as Sites and Subjects of Exhibitions -- Civil Society and the Organized Preservation of Castles -- Castles, Civil Society, and the Paradoxes of "Taisho Militarism" -- Building an Urban Military -- Castles and Military Hard Power -- Castles as Military Soft Power -- Challenging the Military -- The military and Public in Osaka -- Castles in War and Peace: Celebrating Modernity, Empire, and War -- The Early Development of Castle Studies -- The Arrival of Castle Studies in Wartime -- Castles for town and country -- Castles for the empire -- From feudalism to the edge of space -- Castles in war and peace II: Kokura, Kanazawa, and the Rehabilitation of the -- Nation -- Desolate gravesites of fallen empire: what became of castles -- The imperial castle and the transformation of the center -- Kanazawa castle and the ideals of progressive education -- Losing our traditions: lamenting the fate of japanese heritage -- Kokura castle and the politics of japanese identity -- "Fukko": hiroshima castle rises from the ashes -- Hiroshima castle: from castle road to macarthur boulevard and back -- Prelude to the castle: rebuilding hiroshima gokoku shrine -- Reconstructions: celebrations of recovery in hiroshima -- Between modernity and tradition at the periphery and the world stage -- The weight of Meiji: the imperial general headquarters in hiroshima and the -- Meiji centenary -- Escape from the center: castles and the search for local identity -- Elephants and castles: odawara and the shadow of tokyo -- Victims of history I: Aizu-wakamatsu and the revival of grievances -- Victims of history II: Shimabara castle and the Enshrinement of loss -- Southern Barbarians at the gates: Kokura castle's struggle with authenticity -- Japan's new castle builders: recapturing tradition and culture -- Rebuilding the Meijo: (re)building campaigns in Kumamoto and Nagoya -- No business like castle business: castle architects and construction companies -- Symbols of the people? conflict and accommodation in Kumamoto and Nagoya -- Conclusions.

This text draws on different diciplines, including postmodernist and critical theory, comparative politics, and anthropology, to examine Islamic fundamentalisim.

Violence and democracy may seem fundamentally incompatible, but the two have often been intimately and inextricably linked. In Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists, Eiko Maruko Siniawer argues that violence has been embedded in the practice of modern Japanese politics from the very inception of the country's experiment with democracy. As soon as the parliament opened its doors in 1890, brawls, fistfights, vandalism, threats, and intimidation quickly became a fixture in Japanese politics, from campaigns and elections to legislative debates. Most of this physical force was wielded by what Siniawer calls "violence specialists": ruffians and yakuza. Their systemic and enduring political violence-in the streets, in the halls of parliament, during popular protests, and amid labor strife-ultimately compromised party politics in Japan and contributed to the rise of militarism in the 1930s. For the post-World War II years, Siniawer illustrates how the Japanese developed a preference for money over violence as a political tool of choice. This change in tactics signaled a political shift, but not necessarily an evolution, as corruption and bribery were in some ways more insidious, exclusionary, and undemocratic than violence. Siniawer demonstrates that the practice of politics in Japan has been dangerous, chaotic, and far more violent than previously thought. Additionally, crime has been more political. Throughout the book, Siniawer makes clear that certain yakuza groups were ideological in nature, contrary to the common understanding of organized crime as nonideological. Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists is essential reading for anyone wanting to comprehend the role of violence in the formation of modern nation-states and its place in both democratic and fascist movements.