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Poetic Imagination in Japanese Art

Selections from the Collection of Mary and Cheney Cowles

By Maribeth Graybill

Assembled over the last four decades and still growing, the Mary and Cheney Cowles collection of Japanese art is one of the finest in private hands in North America. What began for Cheney Cowles as...

Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887-1920

By Kazuhiro Oharazeki

This compelling study of a previously overlooked vice industry explores the larger structural forces that led to the growth of prostitution in Japan, the Pacific region, and the North American West at the turn of...

Bringing Whales Ashore

Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan

By Jakobina K. Arch. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Today, Japan defends its controversial whaling expeditions by invoking tradition—but what was the historical reality? In examining the techniques and impacts of whaling during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), Jakobina Arch shows that the organized, shore-based...

Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War

By Noriko Kawamura

This reexamination of the controversial role Emperor Hirohito played during the Pacific War gives particular attention to the question: If the emperor could not stop Japan from going to war with the Allied Powers in...

Onnagata

A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater

By Maki Isaka

Kabuki is well known for its exaggerated acting, flamboyant costumes and makeup, and unnatural storylines. The onnagata, usually male actors who perform the roles of women, have been an important aspect of kabuki since its...

Constructing Empire

The Japanese in Changchun, 1905–45

By Bill Sewell

While diplomats and soldiers carve out empires, civilians play a crucial role in building nation‑states. Constructing Empire shows how planners, architects, and civilians contributed to constructing a modern colonial enclave in the Japanese puppet state...

Spaces of Possibility

In, Between, and Beyond Korea and Japan

By Clark W. Sorensen, Andrea Gevurtz Arai

Spaces of Possibility, which arose from a 2012 conference held at the University of Washington’s Simpson Center for the Humanities, engages with spaces in, between, and beyond the national borders of Japan and Korea. Some...

Conflicts of Interest

Art and War in Modern Japan

By Philip Hu, Rhiannon Paget, Sebastian Dobson, Maki Kaneko, Sonja Hotwagner, and Andreas Marks

This fascinating publication showcases the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection of Japanese military prints and related materials—one of the largest collections of such works in the world. The 1,400 objects in the collection are mostly...

Onnagata

A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater

By Maki Isaka

Kabuki is well known for its exaggerated acting, flamboyant costumes and makeup, and unnatural storylines. The onnagata, usually male actors who perform the roles of women, have been an important aspect of kabuki since its...

Legal Reform in Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945

The Reception of Western Law

By Tay-sheng Wang

Taiwan’s modern legal system--quite different from those of both traditional China and the People’s Republic--has evolved since the advent of Japanese rule in 1895. Japan has gradually adopted Western law during the 19th-century and when...

Wrongful Deaths

Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea

By Sun Joo Kim, Jungwon Kim

This collection presents and analyzes inquest records that tell the stories of ordinary Korean people under the Choson court (1392-1910). Extending the study of this period, usually limited to elites, into the realm of everyday...

The Anguish of Surrender

Japanese POWs of World War II

By Ulrich A. Straus

On December 6, 1941, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki was one of a handful of men selected to skipper midget subs on a suicide mission to breach Pearl Harbor’s defenses. When his equipment malfunctioned, he couldn’t find...

Shaping the Lotus Sutra

Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China

By Eugene Y. Wang

The Lotus Sutra has been the most widely read and most revered Buddhist scripture in East Asia since its translation in the third century. The miracles and parables in the "king of sutras" inspired a...

Toxic Archipelago

A History of Industrial Disease in Japan

By Brett Walker. Foreword by William Cronon

Every person on the planet is entangled in a web of ecological relationships that link farms and factories with human consumers. Our lives depend on these relationships -- and are imperiled by them as well....

Koizumi Diplomacy

Japan's Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs

By Tomohito Shinoda

Japan's policymaking strategy in foreign and defense affairs changed dramatically in 2001 after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took the helm of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Following a series of bland and short-lived prime ministers,...

A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine

By John K. Nelson

What we today call Shinto has been at the heart of Japanese culture for almost as long as there has been a political entity distinguishing itself as Japan. A Year in the Life of a...

Deco Japan

Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945

By Kendall H. Brown

Deco Japan introduces Japanese art in the art deco style through nearly two hundred works of metal, ceramics, lacquer, glass, furniture, textiles, painting, prints, and graphic design. While exhibiting spectacular craftsmanship and sophisticated design, these...

Law in Japan

A Turning Point

By Daniel H. Foote

This volume explores major developments in Japanese law over the latter half of the twentieth century and looks ahead to the future. Modeled on the classic work Law in Japan: The Legal Order in a...

Painting of the Realm

The Kano House of Painters in Seventeenth-Century Japan

By Yukio Lippit

Winner of the John Whitney Hall Book Prize
Winner of the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award

In this eloquent and far-ranging work, Yukio Lippit explores the seventeenth-century consolidation of Japanese painting by the famed Kano painting house,...

The Constitutional Case Law of Japan

Selected Supreme Court Decisions, 1961-70

By Hiroshi Itoh and Lawrence W. Beer

The Constitutional Case Law of Japan, 1970 through 1990, contains translations of 47 Japanese judicial decisions, selected after consultation with leading Japanese constitutional lawyers and judges. Landmark decisions, cases considered legally, socially, or politically importatn,...