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This open access book includes forty-one chapters about foreign observers'discourses on Japan. These include a wide range of perspectives from the travelogues of curious visitors to academic theses by scholars, which offer us a broad spectrum of contents, reflecting a variety of attitudes toward Japan. The works were written during the period from the 1850s to the 1980s, a timespan during which Japan became, in stages, more open to the outside world after a long isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate. From the perspective of “Japanology,” one can discern three distinct periods of rising interest in the country from abroad. The first tide of such interest came shortly after the opening of Japan, when various foreign travelers, including those who could not be included in this book, came over and wrote down their impressions of the country—which was, for them, a land of mystery and mystique, which had just opened its doors to them. The second wave arose at the beginning of the twentieth century, just after the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan again generated a remarkable surge of interest as a “miracle” in Asia that had pulled off the wondrous feat of defeating a white superpower. The third wave was more recent, which took place from the late 1960s to the 1980s, a period of high economic growth when the “miracle” of Japan's remarkable economic recovery from the defeat of World War II attracted enthusiastic and curious attention from the outside world once again. It is not the intention of this book to directly highlight such historical transitions, but these forty-two brilliant mirrors (forty-one chapters, including forty-two discourses), even when looked in casually, provide us with unexpected insights and various perspectives. Shōichi Saeki (1922–2016) was Professor Emeritus, the University of Tokyo. Tōru Haga (1931–2020) was Professor Emeritus, International Research Center for Japanese Studies.

In honour of the work and writings of Professor John Bell, leading scholars present essays on factors affecting the course of'legal development'in common law and Civilian systems. The reasons and context for legal development in a comparative perspective embrace the law both in action and in the books, legal institutions, legal cultures, and the extra-legal environment. Offering an accessible pathway into understanding comparative law, the collection introduces the core features of understanding foreign legal systems. With a range of illustrative case studies, the essays explore topical problems and debates in tort, contract, legal history, and judicial studies. In a tribute to one of the defining legal scholars of our time, this volume draws a rich, nuanced picture of the object of comparative legal research, and indicates new and exciting avenues for further research.

Today, Americans are some of the world's biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. These national partialities, Robert Hellyer reveals, are deeply entwined. Tracing the transpacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, Green with Milk and Sugar shows how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries.Hellyer explores the forgotten American penchant for Japanese green tea and how it shaped Japanese tastes. In the nineteenth century, Americans favored green teas, which were imported from China until Japan developed an export industry centered on the United States. The influx of Japanese imports democratized green tea: Americans of all classes, particularly Midwesterners, made it their daily beverage—which they drank hot, often with milk and sugar. In the 1920s, socioeconomic trends and racial prejudices pushed Americans toward black teas from Ceylon and India. Facing a glut, Japanese merchants aggressively marketed sencha on their home and imperial markets, transforming it into an icon of Japanese culture.Featuring lively stories of the people involved in the tea trade—including samurai turned tea farmers and Hellyer's own ancestors—Green with Milk and Sugar offers not only a social and commodity history of tea in the United States and Japan but also new insights into how national customs have profound if often hidden international dimensions.

This tenth volume in the series, comprising some fifty essays, offers a further wide-ranging selection of essays on different themes and personalities, grouped thematically, from portraits of key figures such as Stamford Raffles and Lord Lytton to the history of Japanese trade and investment in the UK, such as NSK at Peterlee and Mitsubishi Electric in Scotland, from scholars such as Basil Hall Chamberlain, to international Japanese banker Ogata Shijuro.

Published in association with the Japan Society and containing 57 essays, this ninth volume in the series continues to celebrate the life and work of the men and women, both British and Japanese, who over time played an interesting and significant role in a wide variety of different spheres relating to the history of Anglo-Japanese relations and deserve to be recorded and remembered. Read together they give a picture, even if inevitably a partial one, of important facets of modern history and Anglo-Japanese institutions. They shed light on a number of controversial issues as well as illuminate past successes and failures. Structured thematically in four Parts – Japan in Britain, Britain in Japan, Scholars and Writers, Politicians and Officials – the highlights in this volume include: The Great Japan Exhibition, 1981-82; Japanese Gardens and the Japanese Garden Society in the UK; Cricket in Late Edo and Meiji Japan; Norman Macrae, pioneering journalist of The Economist; Arthur Balfour – managing the emergence of Japan as a Great Power; Michio Morishima, an economist ‘made in Japan'; Margaret Thatcher – a pragmatist who radically improved Britain's image in Japan.

Selected, peer reviewed papers from the Second International Conference on Frontiers of Manufacturing and Design Science, (ICFMD 2011), December 11-13, Taiwan

Why Americans aren't thrifty and the rest of the world isIf the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that Americans save too little, spend too much, and borrow excessively. What can we learn from East Asian and European countries that have fostered enduring cultures of thrift over the past two centuries? Beyond Our Means tells for the first time how other nations aggressively encouraged their citizens to save by means of special savings institutions and savings campaigns. The U.S. government, meanwhile, promoted mass consumption and reliance on credit, culminating in the global financial meltdown.Many economists believe people save according to universally rational calculations, saving the most in their middle years as they plan for retirement, and saving the least in welfare states. In reality, Europeans save at high rates despite generous welfare programs and aging populations. Americans save little, despite weaker social safety nets and a younger population. Tracing the development of such behaviors across three continents from the nineteenth century to today, this book highlights the role of institutions and moral suasion in shaping habits of saving and spending. It shows how the encouragement of thrift was not a relic of indigenous traditions but a modern movement to confront rising consumption. Around the world, messages to save and spend wisely confronted citizens everywhere—in schools, magazines, and novels. At the same time, in America, businesses and government normalized practices of living beyond one's means.Transnational history at its most compelling, Beyond Our Means reveals why some nations save so much and others so little.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

This latest volume of leading figures in the history of Anglo-Japanese relations offers a classic menu of personalities, themes and events (in all 25 contributions). Contents include the writings of the Cambridge scholar Carmen Blacker and leading historian William Beasley; British military observer and Times reporter of the Russo-Japanese War General Sir Ian Hamilton; philosophers Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw; the Chosu students Inoue Kaoru and Yamao Yozo who were later key figures in the Meiji period modernization of Japan; and Walter Dening, scholar and missionary. Subjects treated include horse breeding and horse-racing, the Japanese influence on British architects, the beginnings of golf in Japan and Japanese gardeners in Britain.

In the nineteenth century a new needlework style ‘Art Embroidery'gave rise to major commercial ventures of the time. The significance of these ventures is explored, particularly the contribution made by women employed in this industry. Auditing their working practices, then relating this to our understanding of gender history. These ventures stimulated the commercial side of embroidery in the late nineteenth century, by mobilising commercial activity through numerous agencies, department stores, depots and charitable institutions. A craft became a major industry, and in examining these important developments, the organisational structure of these enterprises, their marketing techniques in relationship to their predominantly female workforce, will be evaluated. The theme of business enterprise is a conduit which runs throughout, yet the work is not intended as an economic history, rather business history, as social history. The growth and development of ‘Art Embroidery'in Britain circa 1870-1890 will be explored giving special consideration to the support received from the art establishment in designing for and educating embroiderers. Initially designing for the massive church building programme being conducted in Britain, the immense popularity of medieval and oriental designs employed in this work, lead also to a demand for secular work. As with all art, design changes are a derivative of social and political changes. These deterministic style changes were reliant upon imperialism, Said's notion of ‘the other', but perhaps more interestingly upon white man's burden of manifest destiny, illustrated by Liberty department store. Finally, the decline of the embroidery business in the British Isles will be examined as work was sent overseas chasing cheaper labour in the colonies. Aiming to make a contribution to our understanding of the embroidery business, the book shows the dynamics shaping development and the role of women employed in the industry. In particular the economic significance of the embroidery business to female employment in the nineteenth century will be revealed, as it has been hidden from view, mainly due to employing outworkers, a hidden workforce. Though a social history, the thesis will demonstrate this hidden workforce made a contribution to the British economy.

Commissioned by the Japan Society as the companion volume to British Envoys in Japan, 1959-1972 (2004), this collection of essays on a century of official Japanese representation in the United Kingdom completes the history of bilateral diplomatic relations up to the mid-1960s, concluding with Ambassador Ohno Katsumi's highly successful six-year assignment in 1964. In all, twelve authors, half of whom are Japanese, contribute to the work. In addition to the nineteen biographies, there are essays on the history of the Japanese Embassy buildings in London, an overview of Japanese envoys in Britain between 1862 and 1872 by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, as well as aspects of embassy life which illuminate some of the factors impacting on the life-style of residents in London in former times, including an entertaining personal memoir by Ayako Ishizaka of ‘A Diplomat's Daughter in the 1930s'. By way of appendix, the volume concludes with a short history of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Gaimusho) up to the present day.

There is no doubt that this sixth volume in the Japan Society's highly regarded Britain and Japan series contains many ‘long overdue'essays of leading personalities with links to Britain and Japan that will be welcomed by the researcher and general reader alike – from the opening essay on Churchill and Japan by Eiji Seki, to the concluding account by Rikki Kersten of the distinguished intellectual liberal Maruyama Masao's close relationship with Richard Storry and Oxford in particular and his interests in Britain in general. Containing a total of thirty-three entries, thoughtfully and painstakingly compiled and edited by Hugh Cortazzi, there may well be a case for arguing that the best has been kept until last. Indeed, by way of an ‘Envoi'the book concludes with an account of the Beatles visit to Tokyo in 1965, including a facsimile report for H.M. Government by the British Embassy's then first secretary, Dudley Cheke. Also of special interest are Hugh Cortazzi's portraits of Morita Akio and Honda Shoichiro, as well as John Hatcher's fascinating record of Ian Fleming's 1959 five-week visit to Japan on behalf of the Sunday Times. The volume is divided up thematically and includes an Index of Biographical Portraits published to date by the Japan Society, and by way of appendix, a highly significant report by Robin Mountfield on the Nissan Negotiations of 1980-84, which resulted in the biggest foreign investment in car manufacturing in Britain.

The newly established Meiji government sent a large delegation on a tour of Western countries to report on how Japan might modernize its political, economic, and social infrastructure. This embassy of some fifty top officials was headed by Iwakura Tomomi and included such luminaries as Ito Hirobumi and Kido Takayoshi. These emissaries journeyed to the United States and eleven European countries, making thorough investigations into each country's politics, military affairs, trade and industry, education, and culture. Their reports, which helped Japan emerge as a modern industrial nation, constitute an indispensable documentary resource. Volume I covers the departure of the Embassy from Yokohama, the Pacific crossing, the arrival in San Francisco, the wintry rail journey across the United States, the unexpectedly long stay in Washington, D.C., and the departure from Boston.

The continuing success of this series, highly regarded by scholars and the general reader alike, has prompted The Japan Society to commission this fourth volume, devoted as before to the lives of key people, both British and Japanese, who have made significant contributions to the development of Anglo-Japanese relations. The appearance of this volume brings the number of portraits published to over one hundred.The portraits cover diplomats (from Mori Arinori to Sir Francis Lindley), businessmen (from William Keswick to Lasenby Liberty), engineers and teachers (from W. E. Ayrton to Henry Spencer Palmer), scholars and writers (from Sir Edwin Arnold to Ivan Morris), as well as journalists, judo masters and the aviator Lord Semphill. In all, there are a total of 34 contributions.

Driven by the need to identify, classify and assess western technology and culture together with a desire to advance a dialogue for reviewing the so-called'unequal treaties'- the new Meiji government of 1868 despatched a top-level ministerial team to the west which, in 1872, arrived in the United States. In all, they spent 205 days in America, 122 days in Britain and two months in France, as well as visiting other countries including Belgium, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Italy. Drawing on the papers given at the triennial conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies, held in Budapest in August 1997 (the year also marking the 125th anniversary of Iwakura's arrival), this volume presents a valuable new overview of the mission as a whole, with the significance and impact of the visit to each country being separately assessed. A supplement to the book looks at several'post-Iwakura'topics, including a review of the mission's chief chronicler, Kume Kunitake.