The rabbit ronin's adventures hit an early peak in this second volume featuring brand new original cover art by Stan Sakai! This collection includes Usagi's first encounters with the Lord of Owls, Inspector Ishida, and more, and is highlighted by the Eisner Award-winning Grasscutter, a grand tale assembling nearly all the series' characters in a struggle over the grasscutting sword of Japanese legend, with the fate of the nation in the balance! Collects Usagi Yojimbo Volume 3 #7-#30 and Usagi Yojimbo: Green Persimmon!
The concluding volume of the director’s cut of the classic manga, featuring a specially commissioned cover by creator Takashi Okazaki. Japan has become a land of warriors, warlords and assassins, where the technology of the future exists alongside the brutal traditions of the past. This world is ruled by whoever possesses the legendary No.1 headband. After having defeated the Empty Seven Clan, Afro is forced to face a new threat: a deadly warrior who wears a teddy mask called Jinno. Will his bloodthirsty campaign of vengeance be thwarted, or will he finally face Justice, the man who killed his father, and claim the No.1 headband? Celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Afro Samurai anime starring Samuel L. Jackson!
The Earth had died, and its entirety had been reconstructed with clockwork. Three weeks after the attempted purge of Kyoto Grid, Marie received a mysterious transmission. She, Halter, Naoto, and RyuZU head toward Mie Grid, to investigate; however, what they find is something none of them had expected! "Big sister...please...destroy me" The thrilling second volume of the gearhead fantasy set in motion by Yuu Kamiya x Tsubaki Himana x Sino!
In a feudal, futuristic Japan, samurai battle to become the No. 1 and rule the world. But when his father, who holds the coveted position, is challenged and killed, the young Afro Samurai vows vengeance. Relentlessly pursued by murderous assassins, will he stay alive long enough to keep his promise? In the first two volumes, witness the beginnings of young Afro’s quest, his battles with an array of assassins and warlords, that climaxes in the epic confrontation with the powerful Empty Seven Clan and a showdown with an old enemy… Celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Afro Samurai anime starring Samuel L. Jackson.
Alphabetically arranged entries along with primary source documents provide a comprehensive examination of the lives of Japan's samurai during the Tokugawa or Edo period, 1603–1868, a time when Japan transitioned from civil war to extended peace. The samurai were an aristocratic class of warriors who imposed and maintained peace in Japan for more than two centuries during the Tokugawa or Edo period, 1603–1868. While they maintained a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, as a result of the peace the samurai themselves were transformed over time into an educated, cultured elite—one that remained fiercely proud of its military legacy and hyper-sensitive in defending their individual honor. This book provides detailed information about the samurai, beginning with a timeline and narrative historical overview of the samurai. This is followed by more than 100 alphabetically arranged entries on topics related to the samurai, such as ritual suicide, castles, weapons, housing, clothing, samurai women, and more. The entries cite works for further reading and often include sidebars linking the samurai to popular culture, tourist sites, and other information. A selection of primary source documents offers firsthand accounts from the era, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.
In thirteen wide-ranging essays, scholars and students of Asian and women's studies will find a vivid exploration of how female roles and feminine identity have evolved over 350 years, from the Tokugawa era to the end of World War II. Starting from the premise that gender is not a biological given, but is socially constructed and culturally transmitted, the authors describe the forces of change in the construction of female gender and explore the gap between the ideal of womanhood and the reality of Japanese women's lives. Most of all, the contributors speak to the diversity that has characterized women's experience in Japan. This is an imaginative, pioneering work, offering an interdisciplinary approach that will encourage a reconsideration of the paradigms of women's history, hitherto rooted in the Western experience.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 inaugurated a period of great change in Japan; it is seldom associated, however, with advances in civil and political rights. By studying parliamentarianism—the theories, arguments, and polemics marshaled in support of a representative system of government—Kyu Hyun Kim uncovers a much more complicated picture of this era than is usually given. Bringing a fresh perspective as well as drawing on seldom-studied archival materials, Kim examines how parliamentarianism came to dominate the public sphere in the 1870s and early 1880s and gave rise to the movement among local activists and urban intellectuals to establish a national assembly. At the same time, Kim contends that we should confront the public sphere of Meiji Japan without insisting on fitting it into schemes of historical progress, from premodernity to modernity, from feudalism to democracy. The Japanese state was inextricably linked, in its origins as well as its continuing growth, to the self-transformation of Japanese society. One could not change without effecting a change in the other. The Meiji state’s efforts to ensure that the state and society were connected only through channels firmly controlled by itself were constantly and successfully contested by the public sphere.