Series editor: Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University
Submissions from prospective authors are welcomed, and enquiries should be sent in the first instance to the series editor at [email protected].
Editorial Board:
Pamela Asquith, University of Alberta
Eyal Ben Ari, Kinneret Academic College, Sea of Galilee, Israel
Hirochika Nakamaki, Suita City Museum, Japan
Christoph Brumann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
Henry Johnson, University of Otago, New Zealand
Founder Member of the Editorial Board:
Jan van Bremen, University of Leiden
Routledge is very proud to be publishing this important series, which has already signed up a good list of high quality books on interesting topics, and has a truly international range of authors and editors.
A key aim of the series is to present studies that offer a deep understanding of aspects of Japanese society and culture to offset the impression of constant change and frivolity that so tempts the mass media around the world. Living in Japan brings anyone into contact with the fervent mood of change, and former residents from many other countries enjoy reading about their temporary home, but there is a demand also to penetrate less obvious elements of this temporary life. Anthropologists specialise in digging beneath the surface, in peeling off and examining layers of cultural wrapping, and in gaining an understanding of language and communication that goes beyond formal presentation and informal frolicking. This series will help to open the eyes of readers around the world from many backgrounds to the work of these diligent anthropologists researching the social life of Japan.
By Kaeko Chiba
January 29, 2013
This book examines the complex relationship between class and gender dynamics among tea ceremony (chadō) practitioners in Japan. Focusing on practitioners in a provincial city, Akita, the book surveys the rigid, hierarchical chadō system at grass roots level. Making critical use of Bourdieu’s idea ...
Edited
By Christoph Brumann, Rupert A. Cox
May 11, 2011
This book examines the making of heritage in contemporary Japan, investigating the ways in which particular objects, practices and institutions are ascribed public recognition and political significance. Through detailed ethnographic and historical case studies, it analyses the social, economic, ...
Edited
By Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, Okpyo Moon
April 14, 2011
This book examines Japanese tourism and travel, both today and in the past, showing how over hundreds of years a distinct culture of travel developed, and exploring how this has permeated the perceptions and traditions of Japanese society. It considers the diverse dimensions of modern tourism ...
By Lynne Nakano
August 14, 2009
Volunteering is a recent and highly visible phenomenon in Japan, adopted as a meaningful social activity by millions of Japanese and covered widely in the Japanese media. This book, based on extensive original research, tells the stories of community volunteers who make social change through their ...
Edited
By Joy Hendry, Heung Wah Wong
May 14, 2009
It has been customary in the appraisal of the different approaches to the study of Japan anthropology to invoke an East-West dichotomy positing hegemonic ‘Western’ systems of thought against a more authentic ‘Eastern’ alternative. Top scholars in the field of Japan anthropology examine, challenge ...
By Arne Røkkum
May 14, 2009
Despite their small area, the southern islands of Japan can be seen as stepping stones towards a more nuanced view of cultural osmosis between Japan and the outside world. This book presents an ethnographic portrayal of the people of the Southern Ryukyu Islands and their world. In particular it ...
By Peter Cave
May 14, 2009
The balance between individual independence and social interdependence is a perennial debate in Japan. A series of educational reforms since 1990, including the implementation of a new curriculum in 2002, has been a source of fierce controversy. This book, based on an extended, detailed study of ...
By Chikako Ozawa-de Silva
May 14, 2009
Naikan is a Japanese psychotherapeutic method which combines meditation-like body engagement with the recovery of memory and the reconstruction of one's autobiography in order to bring about healing and a changed notion of the self. Based on original anthropological fieldwork, this fascinating ...
By Yongmei Wu
May 14, 2009
The problems of an ageing population are particularly acute in Japan. These problems include people living longer, with many needing more care, and the problems of supporting them by a diminishing working population and a diminishing tax base. This book, based on extensive fieldwork in a Japanese ...
Edited
By Rupert Cox
May 14, 2009
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...
By Mitchell Sedgwick
November 28, 2008
Globalisation – the global movement, and control, of products, capital, technologies, persons and images – increasingly takes place through the work of organisations, perhaps the most powerful of which are multinational corporations. Based in an ethnographic analysis of cross-cultural social ...
Edited
By Peter Ackermann, D.P. Martinez, Maria Rodriguez del Alisal
October 22, 2008
This exciting new book is a detailed examination of pilgrimages in Japan, including the meanings of travel, transformation, and the discovery of identity through encounters with the sacred, in a variety of interesting dimensions in both historical and contemporary Japanese culture, linked by the ...