The Ritual Of Rights In Japan

Examines how rights-based conflict is important in Japanese law, politics and society.

National surveys indicate that most Japanese, while professing no religious commitment, frequently perform rituals: They regularly tend their family home altars, look after family graves, participate in neighborhood festivals, and visit Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Are these rituals mere formalities? Based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Kamakura city near Tokyo, Satsuki Kawano examines the power of ritual and its relevance for modern urbanites. She reveals the indebtedness of ritual to forms that create an elevated context and infuse the mundane with a sense of moral order. By employing acts and environments common to everyday life, Kawano argues, ritual evokes morally positive values such as purity, gratitude, respect, and indebtedness. Rather than objectify morality in a sacred text or religious doctrine, ritual embodies and emplaces a sense of what it means to be a good person and creates moments of personal significance and engagement. In Kamakura, belief is therefore a consequence and not a prerequisite of ritual engagement. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan effectively challenges the widespread assumption that ritual in non-Western societies has little moral significance and that, with modernization, "traditional" practices inevitably disappear. This is a book that will interest scholars and students of cultural anthropology, ritual studies, and Japanese studies.

Japan is one of the most urbanised and industrialised countries in the world. Yet the Japanese continue to practise a variety of religious rituals and ceremonies despite the high-tech, highly regimented nature of Japanese society. Ceremony and Ritual in Japan focuses on the traditional and religious aspects of Japanese society from an anthropological perspective, presenting new material and making cross-cultural comparisons. The chapters in this collection cover topics as diverse as funerals and mourning, sweeping, women's roles in ritual, the division of ceremonial foods into bitter and sweet, the history of a shrine, the playing of games, the exchange of towels and the relationship between ceremony and the workplace. The book provides an overview of the meaning of tradition, and looks at the way in which new ceremonies have sprung up in changing circumstances, while old ones have been preserved, or have developed new meanings.

This book presents a case study of shichigosan, an extremely popular childhood family ritual in contemporary Japan. It is an interesting example of a custom with very ancient roots (going back to the tenth century), that has undergone several transformations during the course of its history, adapting to changing socio-economic and cultural circumstances. Within the study, the ritual unfolds as a shared platform where basic social values, views on children and family life, and individual perceptions emerge, are expressed and moulded at the same time. This book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of a ritual practice in the intensely urbanized context of present-day Japan.

This book presents the essential facts of modern Japanese history. It covers a variety of important developments through the 1990s, giving special consideration to how traditional Japanese modes of thought and behavior have affected the recent developments.

Integrating political events with cultural, economic, and intellectual movements, Modern Japan provides a balanced and authoritative survey of modern Japanese history. A summary of Japan's early history, emphasizing institutions and systems that influenced Japanese society, provides a well-rounded introduction to this essential volume, which focuses on the Tokugawa period to the present. The fifth edition of Modern Japan is updated throughout to include the latest information on Japan's international relations, including secret diplomatic correspondence recently disclosed on WikiLeaks. This edition brings Japanese history up to date in the post 9/11 era, detailing current issues such as: the impact of the Gulf Wars on Japanese international relations, the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear accident, the recent tumultuous change of political leadership, and Japan's current economic and global status. An updated chronological chart, list of prime ministers, and bibliography are also included.

Practitioners who deal with Japanese law have put great store by earlier editions of this major work, which systematically compares United States (US) law and Japanese law across all the major fields of legal practice. This fourth revised edition updates the work with the continuing dramatic changes in Japan’s legal system, including changes in criminal trials, disclosures to defense counsel of evidence to be used by the prosecution, the increasing use of recordings of interrogation sessions, and the impact of the indigenous movement for judicial reform. All chapters have been updated. In the fourth revised edition, which follows the same comparative structure as formerly, author Carl Goodman ̄ an internationally known authority with extensive experience in international practice, university teaching in both Japan and the US, and US government service — takes expert stock of new developments, including the following: • the Cabinet’s Declaration reinterpreting the Renunciation of War Clause in the Constitution and legislation following such reinterpretation; • interpretation of new rules for international jurisdiction of Japanese courts, including the new law’s effect on mirror image lawsuits filed in Japan; • the Supreme Court’s rulings dealing with the presumption of paternity, the waiting period for remarriage after divorce, and inheritance rights of “out of wedlock children”; • international and domestic Japanese child custody; • unanticipated consequences of criminal trials before the new mixed lay/professional panels; • debate concerning the Emperor’s announcement of his desired abdication; and • an update of Japan’s experiment with new graduate legal faculties. Although the alteration of the legal landscape in Japan is highly visible, the author does not hesitate to raise questions as to how far-reaching the changes really are. In almost every branch of the new Japanese legal practice he uncovers ways in which laws and judicial rulings are closely qualified and are likely to present challenges in any given case. He reminds the reader in each chapter that “what you see may not be what you get”. For this reason, and for its comprehensive coverage, this new edition is sure to gain new adherents as the best-informed practical guide for non-Japanese lawyers with dealings in Japan.