This volume of twelve essays with useful bibliographies, in the fields of history, art, religion, literature, anthropology, political science, and law, documents the history of United States scholarship on Japan since 1945.

This volume of twelve essays with useful bibliographies, in the fields of history, art, religion, literature, anthropology, political science, and law, documents the history of United States scholarship on Japan since 1945.

This book is a political and cultural history of the early postwar Japan aiming at exploring how the perception and cultural values of everyday life in the country changed along with the rise of the kasutori culture. Such a process was closely tied with both a refusal of the samurai culture and the interwar debate on modernity, and it resulted in a decadent way of life, exemplified by intellectuals such as Sakaguchi Ango. It depicts a short-lived radical cultural and social alternative, one that forced people to rethink their relationship to the kokutai, modernity, social roles, daily practices, and the production of knowledge. The subjectivity and daily practices in those years were more important in shaping the cultural identities of the Japanese than the new public ideology of the nation. This challenges some Euro-American historical notions that the new private sphere has emerged in Japan as an effect of the country’s Americanization, rather than from within it. This work not only looks at the immediate aftermath of WWII from the perspective of Japan, but also tries to rethink Westernization in the light of its global appropriation. This volume is addressed to specialists of Japanese or Asian history, but it will also attract historians of the United States and readers from political and intellectual history, cultural studies, and historiography in general.

Examines the history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and how orientalist assumptions have caused the West to ignore this important tradition.

"It is inconceivable that fewer than 100,000 Japanese, willing to work exceedingly long hours at the hardest of tasks for economic success, could create an international problem. Yet at the present time, such a problem seems to exist. It is the belief of the author that were the average American to know the exact facts of the Japanese American situation, there would be no problem. A full understanding by the public is not at all difficult to arrive at, providing the facts and not propaganda are furnished. A certain section of the American Press has singled out the Japanese for vilification, abuse and slander, for the sole purpose of increasing its circulation by sensational methods. We find the people of California constantly harassed by Anti-Japanese Propaganda, while the rest of the nation looks on, expressing only a nominal interest, and that more in the skill with which the propagandists have plied their art, than in the subject of their discussion. The purpose of the author in the present volume is to present as concisely as possible the history of the diplomatic, industrial, and social relations between Japan and the United States, to review the actual conditions in California, and to present as fully as possible an account of the various forces and interests vitally concerned with the campaign of propaganda which has been and is now being waged. The author is indebted to McMasters' History of the People of the United States, Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History, A History of the Japanese People, by Capt. F. Brinkley (Encyclopedia Britannica); the Japanese Association of America, and Mr. K. Kanzaki."--Introduction.

This study looks at Japanese studies in the United States and Canada at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It reflects the life experiences and academic training of the people who identify themselves as Japan specialists, and the structures that have been created to house and nurture the study of Japan over the past six decades. It encompasses both Japan specialists and Japanese studies insitutions and presents the current situation not only by looking at new survey data, but also by comparing that information with what has been collected and analyzed at several previous points in the relatively short history of the field. The Japan Foundation is the Japanese government’s agency for cultural diplomacy and international cultural affairs. Established in 1972 by special legislation in the Japanese Diet, The Japan Foundation became an Independent Administrative Institution in October 2003. Its mission is to promote international cultural exchange and mutual understanding between Japan and other countries. It maintains its headquarters in Tokyo and operates through a network of 19 overseas offices in 18 countries worldwide.