John Manjiro, the Castaway
Author: Masuji Ibuse
Publisher:
Published: 1947
Total Pages: 172
ISBN-13:
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Drifting Toward the Southeast
Author: Ikaku Kawada
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 148
ISBN-13: 9780932027597
DOWNLOAD EBOOKManjiro was a fourteen-year old fisherman when he and four companions were shipwrecked and rescued by an American whaling ship in 1841. Captain William Whitfield of the ship John Howland admired the boy's intelligence and resourcefulness and invited him to his home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, where Manjiro was given a formal education in English, mathematics and navigation. He later signed on as crew aboard a whaling ship and circumnavigated the globe. Longing for Japan, he joined the California Gold Rush and earned passage home. Manjiro risked execution under the strict isolation policies of Japan's ruling Shogunate, but his timing was good. Commodore Matthew Perry and his "Black Ships" arrived demanding that Japan open her ports, and Manjiro proved useful to the government with his knowledge of Western ways. He deeply influenced the pioneers of modernization in Japan, bridging two cultures, and playing a role on a world stage. An extraordinary life for a poor, uneducated boy from a small Japanese fishing village and a wonderful adventure for the reader. Book jacket.
Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature
Author: Edward Mack
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2010-08-20
Total Pages: 333
ISBN-13: 0822391651
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEmphasizing how modes of book production, promotion, and consumption shape ideas of literary value, Edward Mack examines the role of Japan’s publishing industry in defining modern Japanese literature. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, as cultural and economic power consolidated in Tokyo, the city’s literary and publishing elites came to dominate the dissemination and preservation of Japanese literature. As Mack explains, they conferred cultural value on particular works by creating prizes and multivolume anthologies that signaled literary merit. One such anthology, the Complete Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature (published between 1926 and 1931), provided many readers with their first experience of selected texts designated as modern Japanese literature. The low price of one yen per volume allowed the series to reach hundreds of thousands of readers. An early prize for modern Japanese literature, the annual Akutagawa Prize, first awarded in 1935, became the country’s highest-profile literary award. Mack chronicles the history of book production and consumption in Japan, showing how advances in technology, the expansion of a market for literary commodities, and the development of an extensive reading community enabled phenomena such as the Complete Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature and the Akutagawa Prize to manufacture the very concept of modern Japanese literature.
A Collector's Guide to Books on Japan in English
Author: Jozef Rogala
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-10-12
Total Pages: 306
ISBN-13: 1136639233
DOWNLOAD EBOOKProvides an invaluable and very accessible addition to existing biographic sources and references, not least because of the supporting biographies of major writers and the historical and cultural notes provided.
Japanese American History
Author: Brian Niiya
Publisher: VNR AG
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 448
ISBN-13: 9780816026807
DOWNLOAD EBOOKProduced under the auspices of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, this comprehensive reference culls information from primary sources--Japanese-language texts and documents, oral histories, and other previously neglected or obscured materials--to document the history and nature of the Japanese American experience as told by the people who lived it. The volume is divided into three major sections: a chronology with some 800 entries; a 400-entry encyclopedia covering people, events, groups, and cultural terms; and an annotated bibliography of major works on Japanese Americans. Includes about 80 bandw illustrations and photographs. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Asian American History Day by Day
Author: Jonathan H. X. Lee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2018-10-12
Total Pages: 757
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor student research, this reference highlights the importance of Asian Americans in U.S. history, the impact of specific individuals, and this ethnic group as a whole across time; documenting evolving policies, issues, and feelings concerning this particular American population. Asian American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events provides a uniquely interesting way to learn about events in Asian American history that span several hundred years (and the contributions of Asian Americans to U.S. culture in that time). The book is organized in the form of a calendar, with each day of the year corresponding with an entry about an important event, person, or innovation that span several hundred years of Asian American history and references to books and websites that can provide more information about that event. Readers will also have access to primary source document excerpts that accompany the daily entries and serve as additional resources that help bring history to life. With this guide in hand, teachers will be able to more easily incorporate Asian American history into their classes, and students will find the book an easy-to-use guide to the Asian American past and an ideal "jumping-off point" for more targeted research.
Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction
Author: Joel R. Cohn
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2020-10-26
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 1684170214
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUnlike traditional Japanese literature, which has a rich tradition of comedy, modern Japanese literature is commonly associated with a high seriousness of purpose. In this pathbreaking study, Joel R. Cohn analyzes works by three writers—Ibuse Masuji (1898–1993), Dazai Osamu (1909–1948), and Inoue Hisashi (1934– )—whose works constitute a relentless assault on the notion that comedy cannot be part of serious literature. Cohn focuses on thematic, structural, and stylistic elements in the works of these writers to show that modern Japanese comedic literature is a product of a particular set of historical, social, and cultural experiences. Cohn finds that cultural and social forces in modern Japan have led to the creation of comic literature that tends to deflect attention away from a human other and turn in on itself in different forms.
The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature
Author: Joshua S. Mostow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2003-07-10
Total Pages: 815
ISBN-13: 0231507364
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis extraordinary one-volume guide to the modern literatures of China, Japan, and Korea is the definitive reference work on the subject in the English language. With more than one hundred articles that show how a host of authors and literary movements have contributed to the general literary development of their respective countries, this companion is an essential starting point for the study of East Asian literatures. Comprehensive thematic essays introduce each geographical section with historical overviews and surveys of persistent themes in the literature examined, including nationalism, gender, family relations, and sexuality. Following the thematic essays are the individual entries: over forty for China, over fifty for Japan, and almost thirty for Korea, featuring everything from detailed analyses of the works of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and Murakami Haruki, to far-ranging explorations of avant-garde fiction in China and postwar novels in Korea. Arrayed chronologically, each entry is self-contained, though extensive cross-referencing affords readers the opportunity to gain a more synoptic view of the work, author, or movement. The unrivaled opportunities for comparative analysis alone make this unique companion an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the burgeoning field of Asian literature. Although the literatures of China, Japan, and Korea are each allotted separate sections, the editors constantly kept an eye open to those writers, works, and movements that transcend national boundaries. This includes, for example, Chinese authors who lived and wrote in Japan; Japanese authors who wrote in classical Chinese; and Korean authors who write in Japanese, whether under the colonial occupation or because they are resident in Japan. The waves of modernization can be seen as reaching each of these countries in a staggered fashion, with eddies and back-flows between them then complicating the picture further. This volume provides a vivid sense of this dynamic interplay.
Behind the Urals
Author: John Scott
Publisher:
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13: 9780253351258
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJohn Scott's classic account of his five years as a worker in the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the 1930s, first published in 1942, is enhanced in this edition by Stephen Kotkin's introduction, which places the book in context for today's readers; by the texts of three debriefings of Scott conducted at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1938 and published here for the first time; and by a selection of photographs showing life in Magnitogorsk in the 1930s. No other book provides such a graphic description of the life of workers under the First Five-Year Plan.
