Search

Contemporary fiction repeatedly explores Japan as a dream-world positioned beyond the limitations of the physical. It is imagined as a realm which protagonists from Western countries such as America, Britain, [...]

This paper examines the images of Japan contained in the Bulletin de l'Union missionnaire du Clerge and the perceptions of members of Quebec religious orders of Japan during the Showa [...]

What are the preferred subjects of mass photography? We will not go far wrong if we hazard this reply: the Self and the Other The popular practice of photography does [...]

This article discusses the book 'Listen to the Voices from the Sea,' published in 1949, which is a collection of letters, diary entries, and other writings by Japanese college students. The author translated the book into English in 2000 hoping it would provide Americans with a deeper understanding of Japan and their involvement in World War II.

Oshii Mamoru's film Patlabor II engages questions of Japan's future and its involvement in United Nations peacekeeping forces within a science fiction narrative that allegorically reflects--and critiques--the politics and society of postwar Japan. In addition, the film muses upon the nation's experience in World War II and the nature of the ensuing peace under the American treaty. What is at stake in Patlabor II is nothing less than Japan's current and future international position: while the film represents the country's dominant pacifist mood as well as recent debates over participation in regular UN peacekeeping operations, what finally emerges is a nationalist voice supporting the idea that Japan take responsibility for its own self-defense and expand its role in international affairs. This voice often employs a strong, if implicit, anti-American rhetoric, evoking the imperative for national unity by situating the US as a potential threat. These rhetorical postures and ideological viewpoints are weighed and analyzed in the context of Andrew Tudor's influential distinction between the 'secure' and the 'paranoid' subgenres of the sf-horror film.

The recent economic difficulties in Japan make now the perfect time to look back on Japan's role in recent science fiction. Japan has dominated the future in sf of the last twenty years due to its association with industry and technology and with apocalypse in the form of the atomic bomb. The Japanese are associated with three sf tropes: technology, the alien, and apocalypse. Even the traditionalism associated with Japanese culture allies Japan to sf's futures: attached to the past, they will bring us along with them into the future. 'Other Asias' may assume the role of embodying the future only at the cost of taking on this reflective form of otherness.

The French opera 'Madame Chrysantheme' (1893), based on a tale by Pierre Loti, is examined in relation to late 19th-century French cultural politics as reflected in French interpretations of Japan. The version by Felix Regamey tells the story from Chrysantheme's perspective.

There are stereotypical images of Japan in Hollywood movies, such as samurai representing men, and geisha representing women. Geisha are charming since they are not Caucasian, and embody sexual fantasies for US men. Orientals are depicted as different from the norm, which is taken to be western, as is explained by Edward Said in his work 'Orientalism'. Caucasian actors have been made up to portray good Chinese characters. Japanese men were initially portrayed as military men after the outbreak of war in 1939, and then as businessmen.

'Kuroi Ame' or 'Black Rain' by filmmaker Imamura Shohei focuses on the niece's marriage and ostracism to comment on the cultural taint resulting from World War II. The niece, rumored to have been exposed to radiation at Hiroshima, is unable to win a suitor and has difficulty achieving normal social relationships with others in her village.

The location near Japan of the confrontation and defeat of Captain Ahab by the great white whale in the novel 'Moby Dick' is purposeful. Although the author, Herman Melville, was quite knowledgable on the Pacific generally, he was quite unfamiliar with Japan. It is suggested that the significant references to Japan throughout the novel, and Ahab's own obsession with 'Moby Dick' are connected with Japan's growing whaling trade.

The performances of Japanese dancer and actress Sada Yaco during 1900 in London and Paris established her as the best dancer from the Orient. Her European tour was full of hardship and distress but it helped establish her as the undisputed oriental star of the early 1900s. Interviews with Yaco and her husband were printed in newspapers such as Era and The Loyalist. Yaco used her role in theater to advocate women's rights.

Michael Herr's history of the war in Vietnam in 'Dispatches,' Jim Jarmusch's motion picture 'Mystery Train,' and 'The Art of Japanese Management' by Richard Pascale and Anthony G. Athos illustrate different ways Asian difference has been represented in postmodern American texts. Herr traces the war in Vietnam to the refusal to recognize the other as different, symptomatic of a American problem with identity. Pascale and Athos appropriate the Japanese as other by making them familiar. Jarmusch ironically shows how self projects the other to define itself under postmodern conditions of cultural homogenization and eclecticism.

The otherness of Asian countries to many visitors often presents itself in the form of a text. Some visitors realize this, others do not. Roland Barthes saw the text as a linguistic artifact, not dependant on any referential materials such as a knowledge of Eastern divinity for interpreting. Richard Gordon Smith did the opposite, writing with no textual self-awareness and producing a standard European travelogue. Lafcadio Hearn was on middle ground between the two, seeing the Orient as a text that could only be understood by those who had knowledge of the religious beliefs that permeated the society.

The transit from T'ang to Japan is reflected in poems written by Chinese gentlemen at farewell parties held in honor of departing Japanese monks. These dwell on the wonders and dangers of the high seas, and speculate about the location of the fabulous land of Fu-sang, at the birthplace of the sun. After some discussion of the inhuman creatures one might expect to encounter on the passage, this essay focuses on their strange floating palaces, and closes with an intimate view of these in the rich language of a poetic rhapsody by Wan Ch'i.

The new Canada-Japan Literary Awards will provide grants of $5,000 or $10,000 to be made for literary excellence in two categories. The first category is for a book published in [...]

Paul Claudel's 'Cent phrases pour eventails' is surprisly brief and fragmented compared with much of his other work. They differ from his other work on Japan, which tend to be more didactic. He tended to present what he knew of Japan as the truth, rather than a personal view, and as valid for all of Japan rather than the part that he knew. He integrates east and west in his 'Cent phrases pour eventails', since he did not know enough about Japanese literature to choose forms that were Japanese.

How are Japan, its people, and its culture represented in children's picture books published in the English language? Let's examine some outstanding books on Japan published in the United States [...]