Since the end of World War II, Japan has determinately remained outside the current of world events and uninvolved in the processes determining global history and politics. In Japan and the World, distinguished scholars, novelists, and intellectuals articulate how Japan—despite unprecedented economic prowess in securing dominance in the world's market—is caught in a complex dependency with the United States. Drawing on critical and postmodernist theory, this timely volume situates this dependency in a broader historical context and assesses Japan's current dealings in international politics, society, and culture.
Among the many topics covered are: racism in U.S.-Japanese relations; productivity and workplace discourse; Western cultural hegemony; the constructing of a Japanese cultural history; and the place of the novelist in today's world. Originally published as a special issue of boundary 2 (Fall 1991), this edition includes four new essays on Japanese industrial revolution; the place of English studies in Japan; how American cultural, historical, and political discourse represented Japan and in turn how America's version of Japan became Japan's version of itself; and an "archaeology" of hegemonic relationships between Japan and America and Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.
Contributors. Eqbal Ahmad, Perry Anderson, Bruce Cumings, Arif Dirlik, H.D. Harootunian, Kazuo Ishuro, Fredric Jameson, Kojin Karatani, Oe Kenzaburo, Masao Miyoshi, Tetsuo Najita, Leslie Pincus, Naoki Sakai, Miriam Silverberg, Christena Turner, Rob Wilson, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto
- Contents
- Japan in the World
- The World
- Japan’s Industrial Revolution in Historical Perspective
- The Prussia of the East?
- Racism and the State: The Coming Crisis of U.S.-Japanese Relations
- “Past Experience, If Not Forgotten, Is a Guide to the Future”; or, What Is in a Text? The Politics of History in Chinese-Japa
- Archaeology, Descent, Emergence: Japan in British/American Hegemony, 1900–1950
- Society
- Constructing a New Cultural History of Prewar Japan
- The Spirit of Productivity: Workplace Discourse on Culture and Economics in Japan
- Culture
- The Novelist in Today’s World: A Conversation
- Soseki and Western Modernism
- America’s Japan / Japan’s Japan
- In a Labyrinth of Western Desire: Kuki Shuzo and the Discovery of Japanese Being
- Return to the West / Return to the East: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Anthropology and Discussions of Authenticity
- The Invention of English Literature in Japan
- The Discursive Space of Modern Japan
- Theory’s Imaginal Other: American Encounters with South Korea and Japan
- The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and the Postcolonial World Order
- Index
- Contributors
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