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University of California Press

Mirror of Modernity

Invented Traditions of Modern Japan
by Stephen Vlastos (Editor)
Paperback
Price: $33.95 / £29.00
Publication Date: May 1998
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9780520206373
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 12 b/w photographs
Series:
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About the Book

This collection of essays challenges the notion that Japan's present cultural identity is the simple legacy of Japan's premodern and insular past. Building on the pathbreaking historical analysis of British traditions, The Invention of Tradition, sixteen American and Japanese scholars examine "age-old" Japanese cultural practices, ranging from judo to labor management, and show these to be largely creations of the modern era.

About the Author

Stephen Vlastos is Professor of History at the University of Iowa, and author of Peasant Protests and Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan (California, 1986).

Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

1. Tradition: Past/Present Culture and Modern Japanese History
    Stephen Vlastos

PART ONE • HARMONY
2. The Invention of Japanese-Style Labor Management
Andrew Gordon
3. The Invention of Wa and the Transformation of the Image
of Prince Shotoku in Modern Japan
Ito Kimio
4.   Weak Legal Consciousness as Invented Tradition Frank K Upham

PART TWO • VILLAGE
5.    The Japanese Village: Imagined, Real, Contested Irwin ScheMer
6.    Agrarianism Without Tradition: The Radical Critique of Prewar Japanese Modernity Stephen Vlastos
7.    Colonizing Manchuria: The Making of an Imperial Myth Louise Young
8.    It Takes a Village: Internationalization and Nostalgia in Postwar Japan Jennifer Robertson    

PART THREE • FOLK
9.    Chiho: Yanagita Kunio's lapan"
Hashimoto Mitsuru
to. Figuring the Folk: History, Poetics, and Representation
H. D. Harootunian

PART FOUR • SPORTS
The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo Inoue Shun
12.    The Invention of the Yokozuna and the Championship System, Or, Futahaguro's Revenge
Lee A. Thompson

PART FIVE • GENDER
13.    At Home in the Meiji Period: Inventing Japanese Domesticity Jordan Sand
14.    The Cafe Waitress Serving Modern Japan Miriam Silverberg

PART SIX • HISTORY
15.    Constructing Shinano: The Invention of a Neo-Traditional Region Karen Wigen
16.    "Doubly Cruel": Marxism and the Presence of the Past in Japanese Capitalism Andrew E. Barshay
17.    The Invention of Edo Carol Gluck
18. Afterword: Revisiting the Tradition /Modernity Binary

Dipesh Chakrabarty
GLOSSARY
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

Reviews

"This book forces a rethinking of the contentional dichotomy between tradition and modernity. The authors argue provocatively that much of Japanese 'tradition' is a modern invention."—Gail Lee Bernstein, author of Haruko's World

"Sure to stimulate debate in the field of Japanese studies, this important work deftly historicizes the origins of such 'traditional practices' as judo or Japanese-style management."—Peter Duus, author of The Abacus and the Sword