This book challenges the perception of Japan as a ‘copying culture’ through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case studies. It addresses a question about why the West has had such a fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently assimilate all things foreign and at the same time such a fear of their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world around them. Countering the idea of a Japan that deviously or ingenuously copies others, it elucidates the history of creative exchanges with the outside world and the particular myths, philosophies and concepts which are emblematic of the origins and originality of copying in Japan. The volume demonstrates the diversity and creativity of copying in the Japanese context through the translation of a series of otherwise loosely related ideas and concepts into objects, images, texts and practices of reproduction, which include: shamanic theatre, puppetry, tea utensils, Kyoto town houses, architectural models, genres of painting, calligraphy, and poetry, ‘sample’ food displays, and the fashion and car industries.
This book challenges the perception of Japan as a ‘copying culture’ through a series of detailed ethnographic and historical case studies. It addresses a question about why the West has had such a fascination for the adeptness with which the Japanese apparently assimilate all things foreign and at the same time such a fear of their skill at artificially remaking and automating the world around them. Countering the idea of a Japan that deviously or ingenuously copies others, it elucidates the history of creative exchanges with the outside world and the particular myths, philosophies and concepts which are emblematic of the origins and originality of copying in Japan. The volume demonstrates the diversity and creativity of copying in the Japanese context through the translation of a series of otherwise loosely related ideas and concepts into objects, images, texts and practices of reproduction, which include: shamanic theatre, puppetry, tea utensils, Kyoto town houses, architectural models, genres of painting, calligraphy, and poetry, ‘sample’ food displays, and the fashion and car industries.
A novel attempt to make sense of our preoccupation with copies of all kinds—from counterfeits to instant replay, from parrots to photocopies. The Culture of the Copy is a novel attempt to make sense of the Western fascination with replicas, duplicates, and twins. In a work that is breathtaking in its synthetic and critical achievements, Hillel Schwartz charts the repercussions of our entanglement with copies of all kinds, whose presence alternately sustains and overwhelms us. This updated edition takes notice of recent shifts in thought with regard to such issues as biological cloning, conjoined twins, copyright, digital reproduction, and multiple personality disorder. At once abbreviated and refined, it will be of interest to anyone concerned with problems of authenticity, identity, and originality. Through intriguing, and at times humorous, historical analysis and case studies in contemporary culture, Schwartz investigates a stunning array of simulacra: counterfeits, decoys, mannequins, and portraits; ditto marks, genetic cloning, war games, and camouflage; instant replays, digital imaging, parrots, and photocopies; wax museums, apes, and art forgeries—not to mention the very notion of the Real McCoy. Working through a range of theories on biological, mechanical, and electronic reproduction, Schwartz questions the modern esteem for authenticity and uniqueness. The Culture of the Copy shows how the ethical dilemmas central to so many fields of endeavor have become inseparable from our pursuit of copies—of the natural world, of our own creations, indeed of our very selves. The book is an innovative blend of microsociology, cultural history, and philosophical reflection, of interest to anyone concerned with problems of authenticity, identity, and originality. Praise for the first edition “[T]he author... brings his considerable synthetic powers to bear on our uneasy preoccupation with doubles, likenesses, facsimiles, replicas and re-enactments. I doubt that these cultural phenomena have ever been more comprehensively or more creatively chronicled.... [A] book that gets you to see the world anew, again.” —The New York Times “A sprightly and disconcerting piece of cultural history” —Terence Hawkes, London Review of Books “In The Culture of the Copy, [Schwartz] has written the perfect book: original and repetitive at once.” —Todd Gitlin, Los Angeles Times Book Review
A cross-cultural, comparative view on the transition from a predominant 'culture of handwriting' to a predominant 'culture of print' in the late medieval and early modern periods is provided here, combining research on Christian and Jewish European book culture with findings on East Asian manuscript and print culture. This approach highlights interactions and interdependencies instead of retracing a linear process from the manuscript book to its printed successor. While each chapter is written as a disciplinary study focused on one specific case from the respective field, the volume as a whole allows for transcultural perspectives. It thereby not only focusses on change, but also on simultaneities of manuscript and printing practices as well as on shifts in the perception of media, writing surfaces, and materials: Which values did writers, printers, and readers attribute to the handwritten and printed materials? For which types of texts was handwriting preferred or perceived as suitable? How and under which circumstances could handwritten and printed texts coexist, even within the same document, and which epistemic dynamics emerged from such textual assemblages?
This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word “copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, Marcus Boon undertakes an examination of what this word means—historically, culturally, philosophically—and why it fills us with fear and fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of globalization.
This book explores the growth and operations of the Japanese restaurant in Australia since the early 2000s from perspectives of both restaurant workers and consumers. Through first-hand testimonies, collected from chefs, restaurateurs, gourmets and casual diners, it demonstrates how Japanese restaurants act as cultural hubs, connecting a diverse community of migrants, Australian citizens and international tourists, while also disseminating knowledge of Japanese culinary cultures. The ethnographic evidence presented challenges the colonialist and essentialist understandings of the ‘exotic’ and ‘Japaneseness’ as the ‘inferior other’ to the West. In so doing, the book highlights the complex manifestations of cross-cultural desires, translating practices and the performative racial-ethnic mimesis of Japanese ethnicity. Featuring critical investigation into the fixed notions of otherness, race, ethnicity and authenticity, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, particularly Japanese food culture.
These timely essays highlight regional cross-fertilization in music, film, new media, and popular culture in Northeast Asia, including analysis of gender and labor issues amid differing regulatory frameworks and public policy concerning cultural production and piracy.
From the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries Japanese monks created hundreds of maps to construct and locate their place in a Buddhist world. This expansively illustrated volume is the first to explore the largely unknown archive of Japanese Buddhist world maps and analyze their production, reproduction, and reception. In examining these fascinating sources of visual and material culture, author D. Max Moerman argues for an alternative history of Japanese Buddhism—one that compels us to recognize the role of the Buddhist geographic imaginary in a culture that encompassed multiple cartographic and cosmological world views. The contents and contexts of Japanese Buddhist world maps reveal the ambivalent and shifting position of Japan in the Buddhist world, its encounter and negotiation with foreign ideas and technologies, and the possibilities for a global history of Buddhism and science. Moerman’s visual and intellectual history traces the multiple trajectories of Japanese Buddhist world maps, beginning with the earliest extant Japanese map of the world: a painting by a fourteenth-century Japanese monk charting the cosmology and geography of India and Central Asia based on an account written by a seventh-century Chinese pilgrim-monk. He goes on to discuss the cartographic inclusion and marginal position of Japan, the culture of the copy and the power of replication in Japanese Buddhism, and the transcultural processes of engagement and response to new visions of the world produced by Iberian Christians, Chinese Buddhists, and the Japanese maritime trade. Later chapters explore the transformations in the media and messages of Buddhist cartography in the age of print culture and in intellectual debates during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries over cosmology and epistemology and the polemics of Buddhist science. The Japanese Buddhist World Map offers a wholly innovative picture of Japanese Buddhism that acknowledges the possibility of multiple and heterogeneous modernities and alternative visions of Japan and the world.
The theory and practice of imitation has long been central to the construction of art and yet imitation is still frequently confused with copying. Theorizing Imitation in the Visual Arts challenges this prejudice by revealing the ubiquity of the practice across cultures and geographical borders. This fascinating collection of original essays has been compiled by a group of leading scholars Challenges the prejudice of imitation in art by bringing to bear a perspective that reveals the ubiquity of the practice of imitation across cultural and geographical borders Brings light to a broad range of areas, some of which have been little researched in the past
