Japanese Studies
Introduction to Buddhist East Asia
Offers a variety of pedagogical and theoretical essays designed to assist professors in introducing undergraduate students to Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan.
Cinema of Discontent
Uses popular films to reveal the tensions generated during Japan’s postwar "economic miracle," challenging the prevailing view that it was a story of great national success.
Approaches to Chan, Sŏn, and Zen Studies
A comprehensive treatment of the shared traditions of Chan, Sŏn, and Zen in dynamic interaction across East Asia, acknowledging the changing and growing parameters of the field of Zen studies.
Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State
Looking at Japan, traces crisis narratives across three decades and ten policy fields, with the aim of disentangling discursively manufactured crises from actual policy failures.
The Coming Death
Explores questions of death and mortality in several key texts of East Asian literature and cinema.
Before Identity
Aims to introduce a greater degree of theoretical rigor to the discipline of Japan studies as a whole.
The Awakening of Modern Japanese Fiction
Argues that the role of Buddhism in modern Japanese prose literature has been significantly overlooked.
Urban Migrants in Rural Japan
Offers an in-depth ethnography of paradigm shifts in the lifestyles and values of youth in post-growth Japan.
Merleau-Ponty and Nishida
Places the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Nishida in dialogue and uncovers a demand for a motor-perceptual form of faith in both philosophers’ meditations on artistic expression.
Age of Shōjo
Examines the role that Japanese girls’ magazine culture played during the twentieth century in the creation and use of the notion of shōjo, the cultural identity of adolescent Japanese girls.
Help (Not) Wanted
Shows how Japan’s immigration policy is shaped by the nature of Japan’s economy and elite debates about the country’s national identity.
Nothingness in the Heart of Empire
Reveals the complicity between the Kyoto School’s moral and political philosophy, based on the school’s founder Nishida Kitarō’s metaphysics of nothingness, and Japanese imperialism.
Imagining China in Tokugawa Japan
Pioneering study of the localization of Chinese culture in early modern Japan, using legends, classics, and historical terms as case studies.
Inoue Enryō
The first comprehensive treatment of Inoue Enryō, a pioneer of modern Buddhism and a key figure in the reception of Western philosophy in East Asia.
Lifelong Learning in Neoliberal Japan
Explores the trend of lifelong learning in Japan as a means to deal with risk in a neoliberal era.
Japanese Diplomacy
Groundbreaking study demonstrating how Japan's leaders play an important role in diplomacy.
Cultivating Spirituality
Four Shin Buddhist thinkers reflect on their tradition’s encounter with modernity.
Rethinking Autonomy
Provides a critique of and alternative to the dominant paradigm used in biomedical ethics by exploring the Japanese concept of autonomy.
Shinohara Pops!
Surveys the fifty-year career of the avant-garde artist Ushio Shinohara.
Nagai Kafū's Occidentalism
Describes how writer Nagai Kafū (1879–1959) used his experience of the West to reconcile modernization and Japanese identity.
The Failure of Civil Society?
A look at the voluntary sector in Japan, which has emerged strongly only in recent years.
Imagined Families, Lived Families
An interdisciplinary look at the dramatic changes in the contemporary Japanese family, including both empirical data and analyses of popular culture.
Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder
Explores the career of Abraham Abulafia, thirteenth-century founder of the school of ecstatic Kabbalah.
Sacred Kōyasan
Takes the reader on a pilgrimage to Mount Kōya, the holy Buddhist mountain in Japan.
Wearing Cultural Styles in Japan
Explores how tradition and modernity coexist in regional Japan, arguing that the rural/urban dichotomy is outmoded for understanding this contemporary society.
Fanning the Flames
A fascinating look at fans of a variety of popular culture phenomena in Japan.
The Formless Self
Bringing together the depth insights of eastern and western traditions, this book places the topic of the self in a new context.
Morita Therapy and the True Nature of Anxiety-Based Disorders (Shinkeishitsu)
The first English translation of a seminal work in a therapeutic practice that holds increasing interest for Westerners.
Intergenerational Programs
Provides a rarely-seen portrait of intergenerational programs in Japan, including an overview of similar programs in the United States, of growing interest as our population ages.
Steel Butterflies
Explores how Japanese women living in the United States see themselves and how they see American women.
The Folk Performing Arts
Addresses issues concerning the survival and preservation of traditional culture by examining Japan's folk performing arts and the public policies that affect them.
Epic Grandeur
Examines both Western and Japanese epic traditions to argue for a new concept of the epic--an epic of peace, toward which the genre is evolving globally.
Watsuji Tetsuro's Rinrigaku
Watsuji's Rinrigaku (literally, the principles that allow us to live in friendly community) has been regarded as the definitive study of Japanese ethics for half a century.
Wordsworth and the Zen Mind
Studies Wordsworth in the context of Zen thought and art.
Doing Business with the Japanese
This book uniquely prepares westerners for professional contacts with Japanese associates, markets, and audiences. Through stimulating analyses of Japanese society, corporate culture, and communication ...
Plunging Through the Clouds
Constructive Living brings together two psychotherapies—Morita and Naikan— and their associated lifeways. Both therapies were developed in this century, but their roots extend back hundreds of years ...
Imaginal Memory and the Place of Hiroshima
Hiroshima claims a crucial yet neglected place in the psychic terrain of our individual and collective memories. Drawing on recent work in depth psychology and Jungian thought, this study explores the ...
Work and Lifecourse in Japan
The durability of Japan's industrial products now holds world acclaim. But the durability of jobs in Japan—despite misleading Western images of lifetime employment—is no better than in other industrial ...