Performing Japan

Timing & Time Perception Review is the forum for all psychophysical, neuroimaging, pharmacological, computational, and theoretical advances on the topic of timing and time perception in humans and other animals. Timing & Time Perception Review has a multidisciplinary approach to the synergy of: Neuroscience and Philosophy for understanding the concept of time, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence for adapting basic research to artificial agents, Psychiatry, Neurology, Behavioral and Computational Sciences for neuro-rehabilitation and modeling of the disordered brain, to name just a few.

America’s Japan and Japan’s Performing Arts studies 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.

This is a collection of fourteen essays on particular topics from over one hundred years of Shakespeare performance in Japan. In addition, there are four interviews with leading directors and one with a leading perfomer. Unlike the few existing books on Japanese Shakespeare, this book concentrates on modern and postmodern theater, from c. 1970, and contains contributions from both Japanese and Western scholars and theater practitioners.

Performing the Politics of Translation in Modern Japan sheds new light on the adoption of concepts that motivated political theatres of resistance for nearly a century and even now underpin the collective understanding of the Japanese nation. Grounded in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and analyzing its legacy on stage, this book tells the story of the crucial role that performance and specifically embodied memory played in the changing understanding of the imported Western concepts of "liberty" (jiyū) and "revolution" (kakumei). Tracing the role of the post-Restoration movement itself as an important touchstone for later performances, it examines two key moments of political crisis. The first of these is the Proletarian Theatre Movement of the 1920s and '30s, in which the post-Restoration years were important for theorizing the Japanese communist revolution. The second is in the postwar years when Rights Movement theatre and thought again featured as a vehicle for understanding the present through the past. As such, this book presents the translation of "liberty" and "revolution", not through a one-to-one correspondence model, but rather as a many-to-many relationship. In doing so, it presents a century of evolution in the dramaturgy of resistance in Japan. This book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese history, society and culture, as well as literature and translation studies alike.

What motivates a Japanese translator and theatre company to translate and perform a play about racial discrimination in the American South? What happens to a 'gay' play when it is staged in a country where the performance of gender is a theatrical tradition? What are the politics of First Nations or Aboriginal theatre in Japanese translation and 'colour blind' casting? Is a Canadian nô drama that tells a story of the Japanese diaspora a performance in cultural appropriation or dramatic innovation? In looking for answers to these questions, Theatre Translation Theory and Performance in Contemporary Japan extends discussions of theatre translation through a selective investigation of six Western plays, translated and staged in Japan since the 1960s, with marginalized tongues and bodies at their core. The study begins with an examination of James Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie, followed by explorations of Michel Marc Bouchard's Les feluettes ou La repetition d'un drame romantique, Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Roger Bennett's Up the Ladder, and Daphne Marlatt's The Gull: The Steveston t Noh Project. Native Voices, Foreign Bodies locates theatre translation theory and practice in Japan in the post-war Showa and Heisei eras and provokes reconsideration of Western notions about the complex interaction of tongues and bodies in translation and theatre when they travel and are reconstituted under different cultural conditions.

. . . the book reviewed here will trigger a further interest in this area of research, and will invite more researchers to seek empirical evidence in the study of post-war industrial growth in Japan. Hiroshi Ohashi, Journal of the Japanese and International Economies This book provides a theoretically informed and empirically illustrative account of modern Japanese industrialization. Ozawa s translation of classical political economy to the Japanese context is both original and accessible and is a welcome addition to the literature on the Japanese variety of capitalism. Tim Reiffenstein, Pacific Affairs Ozawa succeeds in extending, building up, and joining the Akamatsu Kojima lineage of this unique Japan-born theory of economic development from a fresh, unconventional, and discerning perspective. From the foreword by Kiyoshi Kojima Terutomo Ozawa examines Japan s once celebrated post-war economic success from a new perspective. He applies a flying geese model of industrial upgrading in a country that is still catching-up, to explore the rise, fall and rebound of Japanese industry with its evolving institutions and policies. The book brings together and expands upon theories developed in the author's work over many years, using them as building blocks for his flying geese model. Concepts explored include: economics of hierarchical concatenation, increasing factor incongruity, comparative advantage (or market) recycling the Ricardo Hicksian trap of industrial production, Smithian growth elan, triumvirate pro-trade structural transformation knowledge creation versus knowledge diversion, the price-knowledge/industry-flow mechanism a la David Hume the syndrome of institutional incongruity, and socially justifiable moral hazard versus degenerative moral hazard. The dynamic process of industrial upgrading is analysed in detail, and important lessons for both developing and transition economies are highlighted. This fascinating book will attract a wide-ranging readership, encompassing practitioners and academics interested in international business, economic development, trade, and political science. In addition, sociologists focussing on business and industry, and researchers on, and policymakers in, developing and transition economies will also find this book of immense interest.

This 2010 review of Japan's environmental conditions and policies evaluates progress in reducing the pollution burden, improving natural resource management, integrating environmental and economic policies, and strengthening international co-operation.