Includes 86 easy-to-make toys and accessories in felt. This title contains 32 full-colour photographs pages of the toys and accessories, with the emphasis on cute animal characters such as Pao the Elephant, Miki the Monkey, and Rika the Rabbit. This book includes 86 easy-to-make toys and accessories in felt. 32 pages are devoted to full-colour pages of photographs of the toys and accessories, with the emphasis on cute animal characters such as Pao the Elephant, Miki the Monkey, and Rika the Rabbit. All toys and accessories have a Japanese cute sensibility, and
A girl struggling to fit in. A homeless kitten. An unexpected job offer in an unfamiliar country that changes everything. CJ had a long history of escaping places and people she wasn't fond of. But for the sake of a silver tabby, she decided to stay in Japan for a while. This decision helped her open up her heart and mind, revisit her way of thinking, and reconnect with her estranged family. Let this heartwarming memoir take you to the land of cats and cherry trees as you read about CJ's adventures - from the craziness of the naked men festival, the experience of forest bathing and the significance of finding a life purpose or ikigai, to the temples of Takayama, and wonders of Cat Island - you'll see what a homeless kitten found outside a temple in Japan taught her about an old culture and new beginnings
Most books about Japan will tell you how to use chopsticks and say "konnichiwa!" Few honestly tackle the existential angst of living in a radically foreign culture. The author, a three-year resident and researcher of Japan, tackles the thousand tiny uncertainties of living abroad. -- Adapted from back cover
In this charming follow-up to her popular Felt Friends from Japan, Naomi Tabatha shares 80 projects that anyone can make using only felt and a needle-and-thread. Here are soft toys and dolls, adorable outfits to dress them in, and a variety of useful and attractive accessories and decorative household items, all reflecting the retro style that Tabatha remembers from her childhood in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. More Felt Friends from Japan opens by introducing a zoo-ful of animals (Chimpanzee, Giraffe, Lion, Hippo, Anteater, Elephant, Zebra, Capybara); and then presents an adorable Kitty, ready to go shopping and dress up. Readers also meet Kitty’s friends—Piggy, Bear, Dog, and Monkey—and will have a chance to fashion costumes for them as well. Tabatha even shows readers how to turn these clever creatures into hand puppets. After fun with of couple of precious pooches, it’s time for Nostalgic Posing Dolls named Ruru, Lili, Lala-chan, and a lovely little Fawn. In the Accessories section, Tabatha includes Hanging Charms (beaded strands with little figures such as birds, cats, fish, frogs, and cookies); Fun Coasters in the shapes of a frog, a fish, and a chick; Eyeglass Cases; and Pouches. There are small and large tote bags, each with an appealing animal appliqué; and an assortment of brooches shaped like the faces of favorites like a koala, a piglet, a panda, a pug, and more. Every project features clear, step-by-step instructions accompanied by beautiful full-color photographs and cut-out patterns. Plus, an explanatory section covers the basic stitches and techniques used. Everything is hand-stitched—no sewing machines, tools, or intricate steps are required. Simple enough for crafters ranging in age from about ten years old to adult, More Felt Friends from Japan is sure to please anyone who loves creating cute things from felt.
In 1941, Imperial Japan rapidly brought an end to the British Empire in Asia. Because a non-white race dared to upset the white colonialists’ status quo in Asia, the British resented the Japanese long after the war. Mr. Henry Scott-Stokes states that he held such a view as well before arriving in Japan as a foreign correspondent. Mr. Scott-Stokes writes of his transformation, of uncritical acceptance of the western colonialist’s version of the Greater East Asian War, the so-called Pacific War, to realization of its absolute vacuousness. “[The Japanese],” he states, “were supposed to simply accept, without any criticism or opposition whatsoever, the noble wisdom of civilization [the verdicts of the Tokyo Trials].” Mindless parroting of historical fabrications by modern Japanese suggests a loss of national consciousness, of what it means to be Japanese, as Yukio Mishima expressed in his discussions with Mr. Scott-Stokes. Japan lost her independence to America and is merely a protectorate and not a nation with her own culture and history. Japanese people need to take it upon themselves to change this situation. Mr. Stokes’ mother-in-law, however, wryly commented that today’s Japanese are cowards, so it will take another 200 or 300 years.
In 1961, President Kennedy named Edwin O. Reischauer the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Already deeply intimate with the country, Reischauer hoped to establish a more equal partnership with Japan, which had long been maligned in the American imagination. Reischauer pushed his fellow citizens to abandon caricature and stereotype and recognize Japan as a peace-loving democracy. Though his efforts were often condemned for being "too soft," the immensity of his influence (and the truth of his arguments) can be felt today. Having worked as Reischauer's special assistant in Tokyo, George R. Packard writes the definitive& mdash;and first& mdash;biography of this rare, charismatic talent. Reischauer reset the balance between two powerful nations. During World War II, he analyzed intelligence and trained American codebreakers in Japanese. He helped steer Japan toward democracy and then wrote its definitive English-language history. Reischauer's scholarship supplied the foundations for future East Asian disciplines, and his prescient research foretold America's missteps with China and involvement in Vietnam. At the time of his death in 1990, Reischauer warned the U.S. against adopting an attitude toward Asia that was too narrow and self-centered. India, Pakistan, and North Korea are now nuclear powers, and Reischauer's political brilliance has become more necessary and trenchant than ever.
Uchimura Kanz was one of Japan's foremost thinkers. His ideas influenced contemporary novelists, statesmen, reformers, and religious leaders. The originator and proponent of a particularly "Japanese" form of Christianity known as mukykai, Uchimura struggled with the tensions between his love for the homeland and his love for God. Articulate, prolific, passionate, and profound, he earned a reputation as the most consistent critic of his society and knowledgeable Japanese interpreter of Christianity and its Bible. Through this exceptional man's life, John Howes charts what it meant to live during the introduction of Christianity to Japan.
Since Japan’s economic recession began in the 1990s, the female workforce has experienced revolutionary changes as greater numbers of women have sought to establish careers. Employment trends indicate that increasingly white-collar professional women are succeeding in breaking through the "glass ceiling", as digital technologies blur and redefine work in spatial, gendered, and ideological terms. This book examines what motivates Japanese women to pursue professional careers in the contemporary neoliberal economy, and how they reconfigure notions of selfhood while doing so. It analyses how professional women contest conventional notions of femininity in contemporary Japan and in turn, negotiate new gender roles and cultural assumptions about women, whilst reorganizing the Japanese workplace and wider socio-economic relationships. Further, the book explores how professional women create new social identities through the mutual conditioning of structure and self, and asks how women come to understand their experiences; how their actions change the gendering of the workforce; and how their lives shape the economic, political, social, and cultural landscapes of this post-industrial nation. Based on extensive fieldwork, Career Women in Contemporary Japan will have broad appeal across a range of disciplines including Japanese culture and society, gender and family studies, women’s studies, anthropology, ethnology and sociology.
Based on over two years of participant-observation in labor brokerage firms, factories, schools, churches, and people’s homes in Japan and Brazil, Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer presents an ethnographic portrait of what it means in practice to “live transnationally,” that is, to contend with the social, institutional, and aspirational landscapes bridging different national settings. Rather than view Japanese-Brazilian labor migrants and their families as somehow lost or caught between cultures, she demonstrates how they in fact find creative and flexible ways of belonging to multiple places at once. At the same time, the author pays close attention to the various constraints and possibilities that people face as they navigate other dimensions of their lives besides ethnic or national identity, namely, family, gender, class, age, work, education, and religion
