An Introduction to Yokai Culture　Monsters, Ghosts, and Outsiders in Japanese History

KOMATSU Kazuhiko / Hiroko YODA / Matt ALT

3,003円 (税込)
15pt

3,003円 (税込)

15pt

0件

Since ancient times, the Japanese have lived with superstitions of strange presences and phenomena known as ＂yokai,＂ creating a culture by turns infused with unease, fear, and divinity. Tsukimono spirit possessions. Fearsome kappa, oni, and tengu. Yamauba crones. Ghostly yurei. Otherworldy ijin...Where did they come from? Why do they remain so popular? Written by Japan's premier scholar of yokai and strange tales, this book is both an introduction to the rich imagination and spirituality of Japan's yokai culture and a history of the authors and writings that have shaped yokai studies as a field.

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カテゴリ

：

ビジネス・実用
ジャンル

：

学術・語学 / 哲学・宗教・心理
出版社

：

Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture
電子版発売日

：

2017年05月20日
コンテンツ形式

：

EPUB
サイズ(目安)

：

13MB

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The Art of Emptiness

3,003円 (税込)

For several hundred years, Japanese porcelain has been highly acclaimed and sought after around the world. Sophisticated porcelain ware has long been produced in the Arita area of Kyushu, and artisans from the Kakiemon family have gained particular renown for their skill in enamels and their artistic designs. Now, for the first time, the techniques and tradition behind the creation of their ceramic works are disclosed through the words of the late Kakiemon XIV. Starting with his childhood memories, he talks about his father and grandfather and what he inherited from them; how the craftsmen work at the kiln; and how materials such as stone, clay, and firewood play a crucial part in creating the works. Most striking of all are the explanations of aka-e overglaze enamels and nigoshide porcelain, the characteristics that make Kakiemon ware so phenomenal. With more than twenty color plates depicting Kakiemon pieces from museums and private collections, this volume provides rare insight into one of the world’s most famous kilns.

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The Book of Urushi: Japanese Lacquerware from a Master

2,849円 (税込)

Urushi, Japanese lacquerware, is perhaps the oldest and most sublime of all the Japanese arts and crafts. Its history goes back more than 7,000 years, and it is still vibrantly alive today. It is practiced by craftsmen working in time-honored techniques and by modern artists forging the future. Valued for its utilitarian durability, urushi developed into an incomparable art, adorning a multitude of objects from luxurious palaces to lavish murals and exquisitely crafted fountain pens. The present book, written more than fifty years ago by the Living National Treasure Matsuda Gonroku, has long been a must-read for collectors, researchers, and laypeople. It is the “bible” of urushi, covering every conceivable aspect of the subject. It includes some fifty full-color illustrations of masterpieces honored by history and masterworks by Matsuda himself. The present edition has been supervised by Murose Kazumi, a disciple of Matsuda’s and a Living National Treasure in his own right. His foreword enables the reader to acquire a broader understanding of the contents of the book and gain a deeper appreciation of its value and impact on the world of urushi.

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The Lure of Pokemon: Video Games and the Savage Mind

2,156円 (税込)

Video games are often thought to draw children out of nature and into isolated, closed spaces. In The Lure of Pokemon: Video Games and the Savage Mind, however, Nakazawa Shinichi shows how the Pokemon series of video games, far from standing in opposition to nature, actually seeks to represent the true, hidden essence of the natural world. From humble beginnings as a video game launched in the mid-90s, Pokemon has become a global entertainment franchise, even reaching into the real world with “augmented reality” via the mobile game Pokemon Go. Nakazawa argues that the Pokemon worldview is the best contemporary example of Levi-Strauss’s “savage mind” (la pensee sauvage). As the natural environment is transformed around them, the author suggests, children that would once have directly observed and explored nature encounter it through technology instead. Contemporary games and other narratives can often be viewed as attempts to reconnect the human unconscious with nature, undoing the separation effected by the scientific, rational thought of Western modernity. Nakazawa also shows how games like Pokemon recreate deep-rooted social patterns. When characters capture monsters, carry them around in “Poke Balls,” and swap them with other characters, they are part of a tradition in which trade is more than just the exchange of goods. Barter is a much more profound form of communication in which each participant also receives part of the other. The author supports his argument through close analysis of the history and even prehistory of video games in Japanese culture. Drawing on mythology, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and other resources, he explores cultural touchstones like Space Invaders, Ultraman, and the RPG as a genre, showing how their rich, direct expression appeals directly to the urges and impulses within children themselves, helping them come to terms with their place in the world. The Lure of Pokemon: Video Games and the Savage Mind is both a work of game criticism revealing la pensee sauvage within today’s video games and an examination of Japanese culture as the context from which the Pokemon phenomenon was born.

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The Music of Color

2,849円 (税込)

“I have received color without limit from the natural world in the years since I entered the dyer’s way. It has poured down on me endlessly, too much for this meager vessel to hold. Joyful as a child with a new set of paints, I have woven and woven yarn dyed by the grasses and trees”. A startlingly original creator in the medium of textiles, Living National Treasure Shimura Fukumi is also well known in Japan for her essays on color, nature, and the work of weaving and dyeing. The Music of Color collects some of Shimura’s most insightful writing together with Takao Inoue’s stunning photographs of her art and the natural world that inspires it. From winter snows to spring blossoms, from the foothills of Japan’s “Southern Alps” to the back streets of Gion, Kyoto, Shimura initiates the reader into a facet of Japanese culture where the boundary between craft and art is blurred. Her insight into the sources and uses of natural color, along with her decades of experience in the world of Japanese textiles, from silkworm and loom to finished kimono, are both on full display in this rich collection. Travels from Bashо-’s “Deep North” to the western island of Kyushu are recorded, as are valuable accounts of Shimura’s encounters with other figures in Japanese aesthetics such as lacquerware master Kuroda Tatsuaki and poet-critic О-oka Makoto. Offering new perspectives on contemporary textiles, Japanese folk craft traditions, and thoughts on how Japanese artists engage with the four seasons, the gemlike essays and translucent photographs of The Music of Color will linger with the reader long after the book itself is over. “We draw the beautiful colors of the sakura not from the petals but the gnarled bark and branches. . . . The blossoms have already bloomed, so no color can come from there. It is the spirit of the tree entire, ceaselessly active, that emerges in the hue of each petal― and do we not see the same truth in the world of words?”

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The Story of Japan's Ohmi Merchants: The Precept of Sanpo-yoshi

2,618円 (税込)

From its very origins, Ohmi was a highly developed region bordering Kyoto, the center of political power. For that reason, Ohmi is closely tied to the history of political, cultural, social and economic development in Kyoto, and therefore Japan as a whole. Ancient Ohmi was first developed by immigrants from the Korean Peninsula and China and was a vital crossing point connecting Kyoto with eastern Japan. The intersection of the Nakasendo Road and the Tokaido Road was located within its borders. The vital traffic of people and goods led to the early development of organizations and individuals engaged in the concentrated delivery of vast quantities of products. Ohmi merchants can be considered the very source of Japanese-style management. The key concepts that they developed underpinned the success of Japanese corporations for generations. These include core concepts such as sanpo-yoshi or “three-way satisfaction” and corporate social responsibility (CSR), considering a third-person perspective, being a member of society, a healthy tension with society, customer satisfaction, contribution to society, the social consciousness of “good for the world”, appropriate profits, avoid waste and give your all, the spirit of the peddler, faith and devotion, talent and innovation, leveraging information and investing in startup ventures. Inspirational and practical, this book is full of useful ideas and methods that have helped Japanese corporations and individuals achieve success for generations. It is recommended for any student of business or anyone who wants to dig deep into the historical background that helped Japanese companies overcome adversity and achieve greatness.

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Population and the Japanese Economy: Longevity, Innovation, and Economic Growth

1,925円 (税込)

Japan, a country where population decline is progressing and the number of workers is decreasing. While the fiscal deficit continues to expand, rural regions are in a crisis of disappearance. Isn’t the decline of the nation already inevitable? Versus such preconceptions, economics which has struggled with population issues over many years responds “No!” Innovation holds the key to economic growth, and the fact that Japan is one of the world’s leading longevity societies poses an opportunity. This book sweeps away the “population decline pessimism” that has spread throughout Japan and approaches the real issues of the Japanese economy.

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Flowers, Birds, Wind, and Moon: The Phenomenology of Nature in Japanese Culture

2,618円 (税込)

Japanese culture is deeply rooted in nature―from literature to the visual arts, and from religious practice to daily life. How, when, and why this close association with nature developed is explored in this book by bestselling author Matsuoka Seigow. Using ten key motifs―mountains, paths, deities, wind, birds, flowers, buddhas, time, dreams, and moon―each of which serves as a lens on different aspects of Japanese culture, Matsuoka ranges from history and ethnology to the arts. He also explores the insights that emerge when traditional sensibilities are examined from the perspective of modern science. Japanese concepts of time, interval, and otherness, though arrived at intuitively, overlap with how contemporary fields such as quantum physics and relativity theory grapple with issues of uncertainty, indeterminacy, and ambiguity. Matsuoka proposes that throughout history, the phenomena of nature and the kaleidoscope of seasonal change have functioned as a system of recombinant codes for the expression of the Japanese sensibility. This unique multimedia system for the cultural construction of nature has generated the essential creative motifs of Japanese literature, fine arts, and craft, which in turn have shaped every aspect of Japanese life and thought.

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Making Xavier’s Dream Real: Vernacular Writings of Catholic Missionaries in Modern Japan

2,310円 (税込)

This book reveals how St. Francis Xavier’s (1506～1552) dream of evangelizing Japan has been realized by four Catholic missionaries: Aime Villion (1843～1932), Sauveur Candau (1897～1955), Hermann Heuvers (1890～1977), and Georges Neyrand (1920～2011). All of them lived in Japan until death, and wrote and published widely in Japanese for the populace. Their writings are testimony to their endeavors to learn the language, understand the people, and enrich Japanese culture with Christianity. This book re-examines Xavier’s proficiency in Japanese, investigates his influence on missionaries who followed his footsteps to Japan, and explores modern missionaries’ observations of Japan from their insider-outsider perspectives. Their works have fascinated millions of Japanese for their insightful interpretations of Japan and enlightening advice. The literature penned by these missionaries not only enhances our understanding of the five-century long dialogue between Europe and Japan, but also enables us to recognize and appreciate the extremely important role that Christianity has played in shaping today’s Japanese culture.

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Traditional Cuisine of the Ryukyu Islands: A History of Health and Healing

2,310円 (税込)

In recent decades, Okinawan cuisine has earned a place in the Japanese food scene due to its healthy diet. The recipes are the results of wisdom passed down through generations on the southern islands. Little is known, however, that their roots can be traced back to a nineteenth century guidebook on diet therapy which was written by a renowned doctor. Tokashiki Pechin Tsukan was the chief physician to the king of the Ryukyu Kingdom, as the islands were known for five centuries before they became Okinawa. Tsukan penned Gozen honzo in 1832, which can be directly translated as “medicinal foods placed on a tray and served to the king.” From grains and vegetables to meat and fish, he took up 300 traditional Ryukyu foodstuffs, explaining their medicinal effects, the preparations required, and their effective combinations. This modern version of the Gozen honzo unveils the knowledge it contains, covering 60 ingredients and 70 recipes from the text to reproduce the various delicacies. The exceptional pictures radiate the richness of the dishes, and the additional commentary on culture provides deep insight into how people lived on the islands. This reading experience will lead you to understand that the Okinawan saying “food is kusuimun (medicine)” is truly so. ※この商品は固定レイアウトで作成されており、タブレットなど大きいディスプレイを備えた端末で読むことに適しています。また、文字列のハイライトや検索、辞書の参照、引用などの機能が使用できません。

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The Japan-US Alliance of Hope: Asia-Pacific Maritime Security

2,464円 (税込)

The Japan-US alliance has continued to deepen and develop for around sixty years, responding to the security environment of the times. But today, the security order of the Asia-Pacific region is at an important turning point. China’s maritime activities are only intensifying, causing growing instability in the regional maritime security environment. As the existing order of the Asia-Pacific region is now being threatened, the Japan-US alliance is an “alliance of hope” for peace and prosperity. In this book, the authors analyze the present conditions of the alliance and discuss its future direction from this perspective of maintaining the maritime security order in the Asia-Pacific region. Together with the diplomatic and security policies of Japan and the US, and of China, their research subjects include the policies of India, Australia, South Korea, Russia, and ASEAN, which are the main players in the oceans of the region, and they derive important hints for the future of the Japan-US alliance.

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How Human Is Human?: The View from Robotics Research

2,156円 (税込)

How Human Is Human?: The View from Robotics Research presents an overview of various androids created by its author, Hiroshi Ishiguro, along with episodes and difficulties encountered during their development. Unlike the industrial robots so commonly seen in today’s factories, Dr. Ishiguro’s androids are designed with a focus on providing new tools for human interaction and communication. Of particular note are his Geminoid series androids, which are designed to exactly duplicate the appearance of actual living beings (in the case of the latter, Ishiguro himself), providing insights into psychological phenomena arising from the experience of encountering one’s doppelganger. These androids further allow for remote operations over the Internet, allowing users to project their voice and even movements, thereby establishing a sense of presence that is impossible through commonplace technologies such as video conferencing. These androids thus represent a first step toward telepresence technologies only encountered today in works of science fiction.

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Advances in Cancer Immunotherapy: From Serendipity to Cure

1,771円 (税込)

Cancer immunotherapy with anti-PD-1 antibodies has fundamentally changed the way we think about cancer treatment. As Honjo Tasuku traces the arc of his research from a chance discovery to the development of a revolutionary therapy, he engages in a wide ranging discussion of the marvels of biological phenomena, the thrill of life science’s explorations of the unknown, the nature of life itself, and the future of Japanese healthcare. In the preface to the English edition, Dr. Honjo shares his thoughts about how we should grapple with life in the time of COVID-19 and offers a message to the next generation. Included at the end of the book is the transcript of Dr. Honjo’s Nobel Prize banquet speech.

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Ashes to Awesome: Japan's 6,000-Day Economic Miracle

1,848円 (税込)

Considered a miracle at the time, Japan’s emergence from devastation to become the world’s second-largest economy less than two dozen years after the disaster of wartime defeat has been widely commented upon and analyzed. Yet all too many scholars posit Japan as an exceptional case that defies repeating. In this eminently readable survey, one of Japan’s foremost macroeconomists looks back at the rapid-growth years and how they revolutionized Japanese life, for better and for worse, and explains how latent demand, population mobility, productivity improvements, and other non-unique factors converged to generate the growth. At the same time, he frankly acknowledges the less-remarked downside of this transformation. Household appliances proliferated, but so did pollution. Urban development was spectacular, but so was the loss of community and history. Massive urbanization provided workers for the industrial ramp-up but also drained farming communities and their traditions. It was a decidedly mixed bag, and Yoshikawa goes beyond the economics to lay it all out in easily understandable prose augmented by over two score of tables, figures, and photos. This is a personal story about more than Japan―a tale that resonates for all economies at all stages of development.

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Goto Shinpei, Statesman of Vision: Research, Public Health, and Development

1,848円 (税込)

The Meiji era (1868―1912) produced numerous geniuses in Japan and one who certainly earns his name on the list is Goto Shinpei. Goto, who was a prominent figure in Japan’s political scene, showed exceptional talent in various fields. Starting off his career as a physician, he became a leading figure in public health, and successfully organized a massive quarantine in 1895 for returning soldiers of the First Sino-Japanese war. Later he was appointed as civilian governor of Taiwan and following this he became the first president of the South Manchuria Railway, showing ingenuity in colonial management which was remarkably different from that of Western countries. He built the basis of the Japanese railway system as director-general of the Railway Agency, and as the minister of home affairs presented a grand vision for urban planning immediately after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. He never organized a cabinet himself, but has been remembered as a successful leader in public heath, urban planning, infrastructure building, etc. From his birth in a poor samurai family to his death at seventy-one years old, this biography carefully follows his steps, while at the same time delving into the visions and methods that made him a unique leader.

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Japanese Art in Perspective: East-West Encounters

1,848円 (税込)

How do Japanese and Western aesthetics differ? In this comparative cultural study, Takashina Shuji, a leading scholar of Western art history and insightful commentator on Japanese art, compares the two artistic traditions to reveal the distinctive characteristics of the Japanese sense of beauty. The first section, Methods of Japanese Art, uses examples and cross-cultural comparisons to elucidate the techniques by which Japanese artists cultivated their unique approach. These include roving rather than fixed perspective, the “aesthetic of negation”―excising the unnecessary to emphasize what remains―and the “trailing bough” motif, which evokes a world beyond the work’s borders and influenced Western artists such as Monet. In the second section, East-West Encounters, Takashina examines the history of cultural interaction between Japan and the West from the early modern period on and its influence on the art of both. The third section, Passing Beauty, Returning Memory, contains essays on Japanese culture more broadly, including its preference for recurring forms over fixed monuments and its tradition of combining multiple seasons in a single image. Japanese Art in Perspective is a guide not only to the art of Japan but to the essence of its spiritual culture.

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Noh as Living Art: The Timeless Vitality of Japan's Oldest Theatrical Tradition

1,694円 (税込)

Noh is recognized as one of the oldest and greatest theatrical traditions in the world. Embraced by the samurai elite some 650 years ago, it ultimately permeated every level of Japanese society through the vehicle of utai (noh singing) and inspired generations of writers and scholars in Japan and around the world. What accounts for noh’s enduring vitality? What does this austerely beautiful, understated art form have to offer a digitalized society awash in instant entertainment? Noh actor Yasuda Noboru answers these and other questions in this uniquely personal and accessible introduction to noh as living art.

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Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853

2,618円 (税込)

Some people view Tokugawa Japan through the “exotic Edo” lens. Others see the era as Japan’s dark ages. And those who reject both of these extremes tend to think of it as simply the run-up to Japan’s modernization. Yet it would be more accurate to see it as a vast flowering of culture spearheaded by the Rinpa school of art led and developed by Tawaraya Sotatsu and Ogata Korin; the exquisite poetry of Matsuo Basho and Yosa Buson; the groundbreaking natural science treatises by Kaibara Ekiken and others; Arai Hakuseki’s Seiyo kibun [Tidings of the West] and Sugita Genpaku’s Rangaku kotohajime [The Dawn of Western Science in Japan]; and by such towering figures as Watanabe Kazan and Hiraga Gennai. All told, the Tokugawa period was arguably the high-water mark of Japan’s long cultural traditions. This ambitious work provides a comprehensive review of the distinctive culture that emerged in the limited space of the Tokugawa period’s 250 years and the narrow confines of Japan. As such, it stands at the forefront of comparative cultural studies and points the way to new insights. This definitive volume is the culmination of a lifetime of work by a scholar whose research on the Tokugawa era has been recognized with awards from, inter alia, the Japan Art Academy and the Japan Academy.

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Reflections on Tsuda Umeko: Pioneer of Women's Education in Japan

1,925円 (税込)

Japan’s five-thousand yen banknote will have a new face as of 2024, and that face is Tsuda Umeko (1864―1929), who devoted her life to the education of Japanese women. Umeko founded one of Japan’s first schools of higher education for women―a school that later became Tsuda College. Half a century after her death, an old trunk in the college attic was found to contain hundreds of personal letters written by Umeko to her foster mother in America, Adeline Lanman. Umeko had been sent to America as a young child to learn English and the ways of Western civilization. She returned to Japan at eighteen, completely Americanized and a stranger in her own country. The “attic letters” are a fascinating chronicle of her repatriation to late-19th century Japan, and of her encounters with iconic figures such as Japan’s first prime minister Ito Hirobumi. This book shows how the passionate young girl metamorphosed into one of Japan’s foremost educators, by following the thoughts of Umeko herself as she recorded them in her letters. The story is told by oba Minako, a writer who graduated from Tsuda College and was herself a returnee to Japan after a decade in the United States. Tsuda Umeko was awarded the 42nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature (1990).

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Sugihara Chiune: The Duty and Humanity of an Intelligence Officer

1,848円 (税込)

Sugihara Chiune was a diplomat who saved more than several thousand lives from the Nazis and U.S.S.R. during the second World War by issuing them with Japanese transit visas. Why was he able to continue handing out these “visas for life”? The man behind these actions was in fact an intelligence professional of rare caliber who, aware of the crisis confronting his nation early on, maintained a precarious balancing act as he traveled around war-torn Europe closely analyzing the global situation. The author, who has spent more than thirty years studying Sugihara, describes here for the first time the real person behind the diplomat and the truth behind the miraculous issue of those visas, based on his close study of documents in the voluminous archive of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of other historical sources. This nonfiction work is the tour de force of the Foreign Ministry’s preeminent “treasure hunter.”

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Well-Versed: Exploring Modern Japanese Haiku

2,849円 (税込)

This volume of seasonally-arranged poems is a guide to the appreciation and enjoyment of the great variety of modern Japanese haiku. From turn-of-the-century masters to poets of today, 300 of Japan’s best modern haiku are introduced by Ozawa Minoru, a leading contemporary haiku poet and critic. Each of the poems, many of them scarcely known, is sensitively discussed together with the background of the poem and the relations between the poets. The volume includes poems from the end of the century through the beginning of the twenty-first century by the most important writers of modern haiku. Alongside these are works by well-known novelists and other cultural figures who were not professional haiku poets but for whom haiku was an important part of their lives, such as Kubota Mantaro, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, and Natsume Soseki. The book also features beautiful seasonal photographs at the beginning of each chapter.

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