To have lived through the transition stage of modern Japan makes a man feel preternaturally old; for here he is in modern times, with the air full of talk about bicycles and bacilli and "spheres of influence" and yet he can himself distinctly remember the Middle Ages. The dear old Samurai who first initiated the present writer into the mysteries of the Japanese language, wore a queue and two swords. This relic of feudalism now sleeps in Nirvana. His modern successor, fairly fluent in English, and dressed in a serviceable suit of dittos, might almost be a European, save for a certain obliqueness of the eyes and scantiness of beard. Old things pass away between a night and a morning. The Japanese boast that they have done in thirty or forty years what it took Europe half as many centuries to accomplish. Some even go further, and twit us Westerns with falling behind in the race. It is waste of time to go to Germany to study philosophy, said a Japanese savant recently returned from Berlin:—the lectures there are elementary, the subject is better taught at Tōkyō. Thus does it come about that, having arrived in Japan in 1873, we ourselves feel well-nigh four hundred years old, and assume without more ado the two well-known privileges of old age,—garrulity and an authoritative air. We are perpetually being asked questions about Japan. Here then are the answers, put into the shape of a dictionary, not of words but of things,—or shall we rather say a guide-book, less to places than to subjects?—not an encyclopædia, mind you, not the vain attempt by one man to treat exhaustively of all things, but only sketches of many things. The old and the new will be found cheek by jowl. What will not be found is padding: for padding is unpardonable in any book on Japan, where the material is so plentiful that the chief difficulty is to know what to omit. In order to enable the reader to supply deficiencies and to form his own opinions, if haply he should be of so unusual a turn of mind as to desire so to do, we have, at the end of almost every article, indicated the names of trustworthy works bearing on the subject treated in that article. For the rest, this book explains itself. Any reader who detects errors or omissions in it will render the author an invaluable service by writing to him to point them out. As a little encouragement in this direction, we will ourselves lead the way by presuming to give each reader, especially each globe-trotting reader, a small piece of advice.

Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study which challenges the conventional view of Japanese studies in general and the Anglophone anthropological writings on Japan in particular. Sonia Ryang explores the process by which the postwar anthropology of Japan has come to be dominated by certain conceptual and methodological and exposes the extent to which this process has occluded our view of Japan.

Exporting Japanese Aesthetics brings together historical and contemporary case studies addressing the evolution of international impacts and influences of Japanese culture and aesthetics. The volume draws on a wide range of examples from a multidisciplinary team of scholars exploring transnational, regional and global contexts. Studies include the impact of traditional Japanese theatre and art through to the global popularity of contemporary anime and manga. Under the banner of soft power or Cool Japan, cultural commodities that originate in Japan have manifested new meanings outside Japan. By (re)mapping meanings of selected Japanese cultural forms, this volume offers an in-depth examination of how various aspects of Japanese aesthetics have evolved as exportable commodities, the motivations behind this diffusion, and the extent to which the process of diffusion has been the result of strategic planning. Each chapter presents a case study that explores perspectives that situate Japanese aesthetics within a wide-ranging field of inquiry including performance, tourism, and visual arts, as well as providing historical contexts. The importance of interrogating the export of Japanese aesthetics is validated at the highest levels of government, which formed the Office of Cool Japan in 2010, and which perhaps originated in the 19th century at governmentally endorsed cultural courts at world fairs. Increased international consumption of contemporary Japanese culture provides a much needed boost to Japans weakening economy. The case studies are timely and topical. As host of the 2020/2021 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2025 Osaka Expo, Cool Japan will be under special scrutiny.

Japan, France is the first comprehensive history of the idea of Japan in France, as tracked through close readings of canonical French writers and thinkers from the 1860s to the present. The focus is literary and intellectual, the context cultural. The discovery of Japanese woodblock prints in Paris, following the opening of Japan to the West in 1854, was a startling aesthetic encounter that played a crucial role in the Impressionists' and Post-Impressionists' invention of Modernism. French writers also experimented with Japanese aesthetics in their own work, in ways that similarly thread into the foundations of literary Modernism. Japonisme (the practice of adapting Japanese aesthetics to creative work in the West) became a sustained French tradition, in texts by such writers as Zola and Proust through Barthes and Bonnefoy. Each generation discovered new Japanese arts and genres, commented on the work of their predecessors in this vein, and broke still more ground in East-West aesthetics to innovate in the forms of Western literature and thought. To read literary history in this way unsettles Eurocentric assumptions about many of the French writers who are commonly considered the

The study of Asia and its plural legal systems is of increasing significance, both within and outside Asia. Lawyers, whether in Australia, America or Europe, or working within an Asian jurisdiction, require a sound knowledge of how the law operates across this fast-growing and diverse region. Law and Legal Institutions of Asia is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of eleven key jurisdictions in Asia - China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore and the Philippines. Written by academics and practitioners with particular expertise in their state or territory, each chapter uses a breakthrough approach, facilitating cross-jurisdictional comparisons and giving essential insights into how law functions in different ways across the region and in each of the individual jurisdictions.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa and Robert Lepage to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.

Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.