Scholarship on Japan’s development from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century has, perhaps quite understandably, been dominated by attention given to Japan’s emergence as a world power through a succession of military conflicts, and the burgeoning of a modern literary canon. This book argues that the emergence of empire and high culture needs to be more thoroughly integrated with an awareness of popular culture in urban life, a culture that at times exhibited a less than whole-hearted enthusiasm for the trappings of 'civilization', - a culture that was, in a sense, ‘decadent’. It integrates coverage of popular culture across diverse media and platforms, accentuating the emergence of new modern forms that evolved from the inter-relation between textual, visual and performative traditions such as kōdan and gidayū. The commentary is seasoned with reference to contemporary narratives, aiming to capture more ‘on the street’ perceptions of momentous events such as war and natural disasters, as well as the more arcane or curious media sensations of the moment. These included exposés of scandalous conduct in high places, new fads in popular entertainments and riveting stories of human interest whether it be crime or tragedies of modern urban living.

A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism offers a comprehensive, nuanced, and chronological account of the evolution of Buddhist religion in Japan from the sixth century to the present day. Traces each period of Japanese history to reveal the complex and often controversial histories of Japanese Buddhists and their unfolding narratives Examines relevant social, political, and transcultural contexts, and places an emphasis on Japanese Buddhist discourses and material culture Addresses the increasing competition between Buddhist, Shinto, and Neo-Confucian world-views through to the mid-nineteenth century Informed by the most recent research, including the latest Japanese and Western scholarship Illustrates the richness and complexity of Japanese Buddhism as a lived religion, offering readers a glimpse into the development of this complex and often misunderstood tradition

These essays on Meiji Japan, written by scholars from nine nations, reflect a determination to destabilize existing paradigms in the social sciences and humanities, in favor of a multiplicity of perspectives that privilege subjectivity and the inclusion of non-elite groups.

A sweeping work of original scholarship, Down and Out in Late Meiji Japan examines the daily lives of Japan’s hinmin (poor people), particularly urban slum-dwellers, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. James Huffman draws on newspaper articles, official surveys, and reminiscences to recreate for readers life as experienced by the poor themselves—something not attempted before in scholarship on this era. He begins by explaining the causes behind the fast-increasing numbers of poor neighborhoods in major cities after the late 1880s and goes on to describe in fascinating detail what those neighborhoods looked like and what their inhabitants did for a living: collecting night soil, weaving textiles, making match boxes and other piecework, pulling rickshaws, building the structures that made Japan “modern,” and supplying much of the era’s entertainment, including sex. He also explores what hinmin did outside of work: what they ate, where they did their wash, how they stretched their meager budgets by using pawn brokers, and how they dealt with illness and other disasters and grappled with the painful necessity of sending children to work rather than to school. Huffman argues that despite the tremendous challenge of day-to-day living, hinmin confronted life as energetic agents, embracing it as avidly as members of the more affluent classes. Reading sources carefully, and often against the grain, he reveals that many of the poor found meaning in their work, took an active and even influential part in their cities’ politics, and nursed ambitions for a better life. And nearly all took part in the pleasures and festivities that urban neighborhoods offered. Later chapters examine poverty outside the cities and the large-scale emigration of indigent farmers to Hawai‘i’s sugar plantations, beginning in 1885. In his conclusion, Huffman looks at late-Meiji hardship in light of twenty-first-century poverty and the global income disparity that has captured the public’s attention in recent years.

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.

Gender and Nation in Meiji Japan is a historical analysis of the discourses of nostalgia in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan. Through an analysis of the experience of rapid social change in Japan’s modernization, it argues that fads (ryūkō) and the desires they express are central to understanding Japanese modernity, conceptions of gender, and discourses of nationalism. In doing so, the author uncovers the myth of eternal return that lurks below the surface of Japanese history as an expression of the desire to find meaning amid the chaos and alienation of modern times. The Meiji period (1868–1912) was one of rapid change that hastened the process of forgetting: The state’s aggressive program of modernization required the repression of history and memory. However, repression merely produced new forms of desire seeking a return to the past, with the result that competing or alternative conceptions of the nation haunted the history of modern Japan. Rooted in the belief that the nation was a natural and organic entity that predated the rational, modern state, such conceptions often were responses to modernity that envisioned the nation in opposition to the modern state. What these visions of the nation shared was the ironic desire to overcome the modern condition by seeking the timeless past. While the condition of their repression was often linked to the modernizing policies of the Meiji state, the means for imagining the nation in opposition to the state required the construction of new symbols that claimed the authority of history and appealed to a rearticulated tradition. Through the idiom of gender and nation, new reified representations of continuity, timelessness, and history were fashioned to compensate for the unmooring of inherited practices from the shared locales of everyday life. This book examines the intellectual, social, and cultural factors that contributed to the rapid spread of Western tastes and styles, along with the backlash against Westernization that was expressed as a longing for the past. By focusing on the expressions of these desires in popular culture and media texts, it reveals how the conflation of mother, countryside, everyday life, and history structured representations to naturalize ideologies of gender and nationalism.

This book explores the emergence and growth of Zen as a non-monastic spiritual practice in modern Japan. Focusing on several prominent lay Zen associations, most notably Ningen Zen, it explores different aspects of lay Zen as a lived religion, such as organization, ideology, and ritual. Through a combined approach utilizing Buddhist text, historical sources, and ethnographic fieldwork, it explains how laypeople have appropriated religious authority and tailored Zen teachings to fit their needs and the zeitgeist. Featuring the findings of three years of fieldwork, interviews, and archival research, the book comprehensively describes various Zen practices and explores their contemporary meaning and functions. It undermines the distinction between traditional or established Buddhism and the so-called New Religions, emphasizing instead the dynamic relations between tradition and interpretation. Written in accessible language and offering insightful analysis, this book brings to light the essential role of lay Zen associations in modernizing Zen within Japan and beyond. It will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, particularly those studying Buddhism, Japanese society, and culture.

"In the late 1800s, as Japanese leaders mulled over the usefulness of religion in modernizing their country, they chose to invite Unitarian missionaries to Japan. This book spotlights one facet of debates sparked by the subsequent encounter between Unitarianism and Buddhism—an intersection that has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Focusing on the cascade of events triggered by the missionary presence of the American Unitarian Association on Japanese soil between 1887 and 1922, Michel Mohr’s study sheds new light on this formative time in Japanese religious and intellectual history. Drawing on the wealth of information contained in correspondence sent and received by Unitarian missionaries in Japan, as well as periodicals, archival materials, and Japanese sources, Mohr shows how this missionary presence elicited unprecedented debates on “universality” and how the ambiguous idea of “universal truth” was utilized by missionaries to promote their own cultural and ethnocentric agendas. At the turn of the twentieth century this notion was appropriated and reformulated by Japanese intellectuals and religious leaders, often to suit new political and nationalistic ambitions."

First Published in 1987. Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945 was an unprecedented event in Japanese history. The shift from the life of hunger to the life of saturation that took place between 1945 and 1980 has brought about a great change in life style. The significance of this change will be a subject of reassessment for many years to come. This books presents an outline of such a change in the domain of mass culture, a sector of Japanese culture most indicative of the change after the defeat and the subsequent economic recovery.

This book examines the transnational phenomenon of Japonisme in the exoticist and “autoexoticist” literature of the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the way in which reciprocal processes of transcultural acquisition – by Japan and from Japan – were portrayed in the medium of literature, the book illustrates how literary Japonisme and the wider processes whereby Japan, with its alien exotic culture and unique refined aestheticism, was absorbing Western civilization in its own way in the late nineteenth century at the same time as the phenomenon of Japonisme was occurring in Western fine arts, which were inspired by traditional Japanese artistic practices. Specifically, the book focuses on the literary works of Lafcadio Hearn and Pierre Loti, who travelled from France and America, respectively, to Japan, and Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, who in turn went, respectively, to Germany and England from Japan. Exploring the eclectic hybridity of Japan’s modernization during the late nineteenth century, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Comparative Literature.