Hobby Japan Co., Ltd.
We release over 300 publications of various genres and formats every year
View Rights PortalWe release over 300 publications of various genres and formats every year
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View Rights PortalThis book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan, which emerged during the 1960s and continues to inspire designers today. The practice communicates a form of visual and material protest drawing on the ideologies and critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s, notably feminism, body politics, the politics of identity, and ecological, anti-consumerist and anti-institutional critiques, as well as the concept of otherness. It also presents an encounter between two seemingly contradictory concepts: luxury and the avant-garde. The book challenges the definition of design as the production of unnecessary decorative and conceptual objects, and the characterisation of Japanese design in particular as beautiful, sublime or a product of 'Japanese culture'. In doing so it reveals the ways in which material and visual culture serve to voice protest and formulate a social critique.
»Das Japan, von welchem diese Geschichten erzählen, existiert heute nicht mehr. Die Ideale, auf welchen der Bau jener überaus kraftvollen, dabei so schönheitsfrohen Kultur errichtet war, sind heute zum Teil schon veraltet und vergessen, zum Teil bestehen sie noch als Reste der Vergangenheit, deren Macht täglich mehr schwindet. … Die Geschichten unsres Buches zeigen das alte, vergangene, schöne Japan, wie es einmal war, das Japan der adligen, kriegerischen, aristokratischen Ideale.« Hermann Hesse
Die vorliegende Arbeit gilt in Japan seit ihrer Veröffentlichung im Jahre 1957 als eine der wichtigsten kritischen Untersuchungen der intellektuellen Struktur des modernen Japan und ist gleichzeitig selbst ein bedeutendes Dokument der japanischen Geistesgeschichte nach dem Kriege.
Im August 1945 lag das japanische Kaiserreich am Boden zerstört und hatte keine andere Wahl, als sich in die (fast) bedingungslose Kapitulation zu fügen. 50 Jahre später, am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts, stand Japan im Zenit seines wirtschaftlichen Erfolges, und die USA, ebenso wie Europa, sah sich erneut der »japanischen Herausforderung« ausgesetzt. Wie war dieser welthistorisch so bemerkenswerte Aufstieg im Schatten des Siegers möglich? Was sind seine kulturellen, politischen und sozialen Grundlagen?
Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), die neben Margaret Mead als die einflußreichste Kulturanthropologin des 20. Jahrhunderts gilt, untersucht in dieser Studie die Persönlichkeit, die Denkmuster, das Wertesystem und die Handlungsnormen der Japaner. Sie versucht, die japanischen Prämissen über die »richtige« Lebensführung aufzuzeigen und auf welche Weise diese sich in der Familie, in Wirtschaft, Religion und Politik manifestiert haben.
Any reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.
This collection brings together studies of popular performance and politics across the nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective from an archivally grounded research base. It works with the concept that politics is performative and performance is political. The book is organised into three parts in dialogue regarding specific approaches to popular performance and politics. Part I offers a series of conceptual studies using popular culture as an analytical category for social and political history. Part II explores the ways that performance represents and constructs contemporary ideologies of race, nation and empire. Part III investigates the performance techniques of specific politicians - including Robert Peel, Keir Hardie and Henry Hyndman - and analyses the performative elements of collective movements.