The author of Women of the Pleasure Quarters shares the story of the famous geisha whose life inspired Puccini's Madame Butterfly, from her training and participation in secret geisha traditions to her defection from her lucrative career to marry the penniless actor and political maverick Otojiro Kawakami and her rise to international celebrity. Reprint.

An exhibition publication featuring curatorial essays and works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This title studies the creation of an 'Empire of Love' in the Pacific and the interconnections between culture and imperial power in the 19th and 20th centuries. It examines the European presence in such contested territories as New Caledonia, and Tahiti, and encounter and conflict in Panama and Indochina.

Japan, and the year is 1853. Growing up among the samurai of the Satsuma Clan, in Japan's deep south, the fiery, beautiful and headstrong Okatsu has like all the clan's women been encouraged to be bold, taught to wield the halberd, and to ride a horse. But when she is just seventeen, four black ships appear. Bristling with cannon and manned by strangers who to the Japanese eyes are barbarians, their appearance threatens Japan's very existence. And turns Okatsu's world upside down. Chosen by her feudal lord, she has been given a very special role to play. Given a new name Princess Atsu and a new destiny, she is the only one who can save the realm. Her journey takes her to Edo Castle, a place so secret that it cannot be marked on any map. There, sequestered in the Women's Palace home to three thousand women, and where only one man may enter: the shogun she seems doomed to live out her days.

Made-Up Asians traces the history of yellowface, the theatrical convention of non-Asian actors putting on makeup and costume to look East Asian. Using specific case studies from European and U.S. theater, race science, and early film, Esther Kim Lee traces the development of yellowface in the U.S. context during the Exclusion Era (1862–1940), when Asians faced legal and cultural exclusion from immigration and citizenship. These caricatured, distorted, and misrepresented versions of Asians took the place of excluded Asians on theatrical stages and cinema screens. The book examines a wide-ranging set of primary sources, including makeup guidebooks, play catalogs, advertisements, biographies, and backstage anecdotes, providing new ways of understanding and categorizing yellowface as theatrical practice and historical subject. Made-Up Asians also shows how lingering effects of Asian exclusionary laws can still be seen in yellowface performances, casting practices, and anti-Asian violence into the 21st century.

The fourteen chapters in this book examine various topics and contexts of travel writings on China, Japan and Southeast Asia. From the first Colombian on a trade mission to China, to French women travellers in Asia, and the opening of "Japan Fairs" in the US during the latter half of the nineteenth century, this book offers a kaleidoscopic glimpse of the various cultures in the eyes of their beholders coupled with insightful understanding of the various politics and relationships that are involved. While this book will appeal to expert scholars and students of travel literature and Asian studies, as well as those working on cultural studies, general readers will also find it an interesting and accessible addition to their collections.

From the demon-killing Minamoto no Yorimitsu to the immortal poet Ono no Komachi, find out about the fascinating world of Japanese warriors and folk-heroes. Japanese mythology is filled with stories of larger-than-life characters that shaped the landscape of Japan. They are the folk heroes who slayed monsters, fought in epic battles and reflected the most complicated emotions of the people who created them. Through a mix of essays, short stories and anecdotes, Japanese Fighting Heroes follows the lives of samurai, warriors, outliers and iconoclasts who forged their own paths. Legendary fighters like the demon-killing Minamoto no Yorimitsu, philosophising samurai Miyamoto Musashi, and the One-Eyed Dragon Date Masamune. Creative heroes like the father of Japanese short stories Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the immortal poet Ono no Komachi, the hilarious Sei Shonagon and her insight into human nature. Trailblazers who broke down barriers like the feminist Hiratsuka Raicho, the statesman Fukuzawa Yukichi, the photographic genius Hiroshi Hamaya. These Japanese folk heroes led fascinating lives that provide insight into our own through the principles and practices they lived by. They struggled with universal ideals of honor, duty, courage and kindness, helping them transcend their culture. Whether you’re looking to learn about Japanese history, fall down a philosophy rabbit hole or pick up new mental health habits, these heroes can teach us timeless lessons. Japanese Fighting Heroes captures the essence of what it means to be human in any culture.

The omnipresence and popularity of American consumer products in Japan have triggered an avalanche of writing shedding light on different aspects of this cross-cultural relationship. Cultural interactions are often accompanied by the term cultural imperialism, a concept that on close scrutiny turns out to be a hasty oversimplification given the contemporary cultural interaction between the U.S. and Japan. »Embracing Differences« shows that this assumption of a one-sided transfer is no longer valid. Closely investigating Disney theme parks, sushi, as well as movies, Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt reveals a dialogical exchange between these two nations that has changed the image of Japan in the United States.

In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, America and Japan were in the process of establishing their positions as powers in a world dominated by Western Europe. The two nations with unconnected histories and cultures found themselves in momentary sympathy as they embarked on their first forays into military imperialism, expanded their trade, and constructed civic institutions intended to compete with those of Europe. It was during this period that mass entertainments developed and began circulating across national borders and, drawing on tourist practices, helped create a "universal" visual culture which coexisted with local particularities. This dissertation undertakes a study of Japanese and American shared visual culture and modern entertainments with the goal of nuancing current scholarship on East/West exchanges and expanding the definition of modernity. Three modern phenomena, panoramas, World's Fairs, and film, form the core of my three main chapters and describe a process of appropriation, assimilation, and collaboration through their movements from Europe, across America to Japan, and ending with a return to America. Many scholars have observed that Americans viewed Japan as a confusing cultural other with a baffling skill at appearing modern. This dissertation begins with the premise that Japan was modern and re-examines American and Japanese cultural exchanges from this position with the aim of shifting the paradigms of modernity and modern visuality.