Born in Japan and trained in Germany, dancer and choreographer Ito Michio (1893–1961) achieved prominence in London before moving to the U.S. in 1916 and building a career as an internationally acclaimed artist. During World War II, Ito was interned for two years, and then repatriated to Japan, where he contributed to imperial war efforts by creating propaganda performances and performing revues for the occupying Allied Forces in Tokyo. Throughout, Ito continually invented stories of voyages made, artists befriended, performances seen, and political activities carried out—stories later dismissed as false. Fantasies of Ito Michio argues that these invented stories, unrealized projects, and questionable political affiliations are as fundamental to Ito’s career as his ‘real’ activities, helping us understand how he sustained himself across experiences of racialization, imperialism, war, and internment. Tara Rodman reveals a narrative of Ito’s life that foregrounds the fabricated and overlooked to highlight his involvement with Japanese artists, such as Yamada Kosaku and Ishii Baku, and global modernist movements. Rodman offers “fantasy” as a rubric for understanding how individuals such as Ito sustain themselves in periods of violent disruption and as a scholarly methodology for engaging the past.

Chronicles Ito Michio's career and explores how fantasy sustains a life disrupted by war, racialization, and imperialism

Starting in 1966, African American activist Stokely Carmichael and other political leaders adopted the phrase "Black Power!" The slogan captured a militant, revolutionary spirit that was already emerging in the work of playwrights, poets, musicians, and visual artists throughout the Black Arts movement of the mid-1960s. But the story of those theater artists and performers whose work helped bring about the Black Arts revolution has not fully been told. Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance from Post-World War II to the Black Arts Movement explores the dynamic era of Black culture between the end of World War II and the start of the Black Arts Movement (1946-1964) by illuminating how artists and innovators such as Jackie Robinson, Lorraine Hansberry, Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, and others helped radicalize Black culture and Black political thought. In doing so, these artists defied white cultural hegemony in the United States, and built the foundation for the revolutionary movement in Black theater that followed in the mid 1960s. Through archival research, close textual reading, and an analysis of performance artifacts, Shandell demonstrates how these artists negotiated a space on the public stage for cultivating radical Black aesthetics and built the foundation for the revolutionary movement in Black theater that followed in the mid-1960s.

On an inhospitable frozen island, Rake Ozenna must gain the trust of a young woman fleeing a Japanese crime empire and caught in the crosshairs of the Russian government. “Another outstanding geopolitical thriller in Hawksley’s excellent Rake Ozenna series . . . carefully researched, action-packed, and suspenseful” –Booklist Starred Review Major Rake Ozenna's mission is simple: gain access to the Kato family - Japan's most dangerous crime empire. But when the secret son of the Russian leader is executed and Rake's target, Sara Kato, is implicated in the murder, a political crisis between Russia, Japan and the US is set in motion. As Rake learns the true extent of their deadly plans, he must draw on every ounce of his training to succeed. Because if he fails, it won't just be his life that will be lost . . . the consequences will be global. _______________________________________ “Brass-knuckled international intrigue for readers who still pine for the world of James Bond” –Kirkus Reviews on Man on Fire “Everything readers want in a political thriller” –Library Journal on Man on Edge “Authentic settings, non-stop action, backstabbing villains, and rough justice” –Steve Berry on Man on Ice

Embodied Texts: Symbolist Playwright-Dancer Collaborations explores the dynamic relationship between Symbolist theatre and early modern dance across Europe from the 1890s through the 1930s. Gabriele D'Annunzio's projects with Ida Rubinstein; Hugo von Hofmannsthal's pantomimes for Grete Wiesenthal; W. B. Yeats's work with Michio Ito and Ninette de Valois; and Paul Claudel's collaborations with Jean Börlin and the Ballets Suédois are studied in depth to shed new light on an evolving dance-theatre form within Symbolist culture. Buoyed by the era's heightened interest in the expressive qualities of the body, these playwrights were highly invested in the authority of language, yet were drawn to the capacity of dance to evoke spiritual or psychological states which words could not completely capture. In its belief of fundamental correspondences among the arts, Symbolism encouraged experimentation across disciplines, and this study traces interconnections among many of its significant figures including Max Reinhardt, Claude Debussy, Gertrud Eysoldt, Edward Gordon Craig, Bronislava Nijinksa, Isadora Duncan, Jaques Dalcroze, Darius Milhaud, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Mariano Fortuny, Terence Gray, George Antheil, Eleonora Duse, and Michel Fokine.