Robo Sapiens Japanicus

Author: Jennifer Robertson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520283198
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in mass and social media throughout the world. In Robo sapiens japanicus, Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourse of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, and animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether “civil rights” should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body with a deconstruction of the much-invoked Theory of the Uncanny Valley.

Robo sapiens japanicus

Author: Jennifer Robertson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052095906X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Hibakusha Cinema

Author: Mick Broderick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136883258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
First Published in 1996. This collection of works is in response to American film scholar and long-term resident of Japan, Donald Richie, words:’ The Japanese failure to come to terms with Hiroshima is one which is shared by everybody in the world today,’ from over thirty years ago, when responding to the Japanese subgenre of cinema which had dealt with the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three decades on, the question lingers, does this appraisal remain valid? Hibakusha Cinema is an attempt - perhaps momentarily - to reorient critical focus upon a rarely discussed, yet important feature of Japanese cinema. The essays collected here represent a mix of Japanese and western (pan-Pacific) scholarship harnessing multidisciplinary methodologies, ranging from close textual analysis, archival and historical argument, anthropological assessment, literary and film comparative analyses to psychological and ideological hermeneutics.

Branding Japanese Food

Author: Katarzyna J. Cwiertka
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824881222
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Branding Japanese Food is the first book in English on the use of food for the purpose of place branding in Japan. At the center of the narrative is the 2013 inscription of “Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese, notably for the celebration of New Year” on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The authors challenge the very definition of washoku as it was presented in the UNESCO nomination, and expose the multitude of contradictions and falsehoods used in the promotion of Japanese cuisine as part of the nation-branding agenda. Cwiertka and Yasuhara argue further that the manipulation of historical facts in the case of washoku is actually a continuation of similar practices employed for centuries in the branding of foods as iconic markers of tourist attractions. They draw parallels with gastronomic meibutsu (famous products) and edible omiyage (souvenirs), which since the early modern period have been persistently marketed through questionable connections with historical personages and events. Today, meibutsu and omiyage play a central role in the travel experience in Japan and comprise a major category in the practices of gift exchange. Few seem to mind that the stories surrounding these foods are hardly ever factual, despite the fact that the stories, rather than the food itself, constitute the primary attraction. The practice itself is derived from the intellectual exercise of evoking specific associations and sentiments by referring to imaginary landscapes, known as utamakura or meisho. At first restricted to poetry, this exercise was expanded to the visual arts, and by the early modern period familiarity with specific locations and the culinary associations they evoked had become a fixed component of public collective knowledge. The construction of the myths of meibutsu, omiyage, and washoku as described in this book not only enriches the understanding of Japanese culinary culture, but also highlights the dangers of tweaking history for branding purposes, and the even greater danger posed by historians remaining silent in the face of this irreversible reshaping of the past into a consumable product for public enjoyment.

Empire of Hope

Author: David Leheny
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172908X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Book Description
Empire of Hope asks how emotions become meaningful in political life. In a diverse array of cases from recent Japanese history, David Leheny shows how sentimental portrayals of the nation and its global role reflect a durable story of hopefulness about the country's postwar path. From the medical treatment of conjoined Vietnamese children, victims of Agent Orange, the global promotion of Japanese popular culture, a tragic maritime accident involving a US Navy submarine, to the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, this story has shaped the way in which political figures, writers, officials, and observers have depicted what the nation feels. Expressions of national emotion do several things: they construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that threaten to produce divisive questions about winners and losers. Most important, they work because they appear to be natural, simple and expected expressions of how the nation shares feeling, even when they paper over the extraordinary divergence in how the nation's citizens experience each incident. In making its arguments, Empire of Hope challenges how we read the relations between emotion and politics by arguing—unlike those who build from the neuroscientific turn in the social sciences or those developing affect theory in the humanities—that the focus should be on emotional representation rather than on emotion itself.

Miyazakiworld

Author: Susan Napier
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240961
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his significant impact on Japan and the world A thirtieth-century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red-haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.

Takarazuka

Author: Jennifer Robertson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520211510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
The all-female Takarazuka Revue is world-famous today for its rococo musical productions, including gender-bending love stories, This text explores how the Revue illuminates discourses of sexual politics, nationalism, imperialism and popular culture in 20th-century Japan.

Jesus Loves Japan

Author: Suma Ikeuchi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781503607965
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
After the introduction of the "long-term resident" visa, the mass-migration of Nikkeis (Japanese Brazilians) has led to roughly 190,000 Brazilian nationals living in Japan. While the ancestry-based visa confers Nikkeis' right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile often prevent them from feeling at home in their supposed ethnic homeland. In response, many have converted to Pentecostalism, reflecting the explosive trend across Latin America since the 1970s. Jesus Loves Japan offers a rare window into lives at the crossroads of return migration and global Pentecostalism. Suma Ikeuchi argues that charismatic Christianity appeals to Nikkei migrants as a "third culture"--one that transcends ethno-national boundaries and offers a way out of a reality marked by stagnant national indifference. Jesus Loves Japan insightfully describes the political process of homecoming through the lens of religion, and the ubiquitous figure of the migrant as the pilgrim of a transnational future.

Age of Shōjo

Author: Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438473923
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase examines the role that magazines have played in the creation and development of the concept of shōjo, the modern cultural identity of adolescent Japanese girls. Cloaking their ideas in the pages of girls' magazines, writers could effectively express their desires for freedom from and resistance against oppressive cultural conventions, and their shōjo characters' "immature" qualities and social marginality gave them the power to express their thoughts without worrying about the reaction of authorities. Dollase details the transformation of Japanese girls' fiction from the 1900s to the 1980s by discussing the adaptation of Western stories, including Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, in the Meiji period; the emergence of young female writers in the 1910s and the flourishing girls' fiction era of the 1920s and 1930s; the changes wrought by state interference during the war; and the new era of empowered postwar fiction. The book highlights seminal author Yoshiya Nobuko's dreamy fantasies and Kitagawa Chiyo's social realism, Morita Tama's autobiographical feminism, the contributions of Nobel Prize–winning author Kawabata Yasunari, and the humorous modern fiction of Himuro Saeko and Tanabe Seiko. Using girls' perspectives, these authors addressed social topics such as education, same-sex love, feminism, and socialism. The age of shōjo, which began at the turn of the twentieth century, continues to nurture new generations of writers and entice audiences beyond age, gender, and nationality.

Japanese Robot Culture

Author: Yuji Sone
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137525274
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Japanese Robot Culture examines social robots in Japan, those in public, domestic, and artistic contexts. Unlike other studies, this book sees the robot in relation to Japanese popular culture, and argues that the Japanese ‘affinity’ for robots is the outcome of a complex loop of representation and social expectation in the context of Japan’s continuing struggle with modernity. Considering Japanese robot culture from the critical perspectives afforded by theatre and performance studies, this book is concerned with representations of robots and their inclusion in social and cultural contexts, which science and engineering studies do not address. The robot as a performing object generates meaning in staged events and situations that make sense for its Japanese observers and participants. This book examines how specific modes of encounter with robots in carefully constructed mises en scène can trigger reflexive, culturally specific, and often ideologically-inflected responses.