Den framstående japanska civilisationen och dess unika kultur representerar ofta en gåta för resten av världen. Efter andra världskriget blev nihonjinronstudier (läran om det japanska) populära; studierna var ett försök att förklara det unika med japansk kultur. Inte alla länder känner behovet att så tydligt definiera sin egen nationella identitet och få är fortfarande så besatta av det som japaner är, möjligen med undantag för Sverige ett land som Japan ofta jämförs med och som ständigt återkommer till Sverigebilden.

I den här antologin utforskar ett stort antal Japanexperter landets historia och aspekter av det japanska sökandet efter en nationell identitet samt vad det innebär för resten av världen via ämnen som arkitektur, religion, manga, kristendom i Japan och samurajerna.

Innehåll:

The idea of uniqueness

Kosaku Yoshino: Cultural Nationalism In Japan Changes and continuities

John Lie: My Country Great or Not The Solid Boundary of Japaneseness

Dick Stegewerns: From Chinese World Order to Japan s Modern Mindset Japanese Views of the Outside World from the Early Modern Period until the Present Day

Roger Goodman: Education and the Construction of Japanese National Identity Rhetoric and Reality

Anne Imamura: Finding One s Place The Japanese Family System in the early 21st Century

Pia Moberg: Japanese Work Identity in International Encounters Cultural reflections

Inken Prohl: Religions in Japan Dealing with Life and Expressing Identity with the Help of Fluid Ideas and Practices

Jaqueline Berndt Manga as Japanese Industry, Mediality, Representation

Elisabet Yanagisawa: From Concrete to Abstract Sensibility, Word and Affect in Japanese Aesthetics

Kristina Fridh En: Interacting Spaces in Traditional and Contemporary Japanese Architecture

Blaine Brownell: Evoking Ihyou The role of surprise in contemporary Japanese architecture

M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J: Early Jesuit Encounters with Warring States Japan

Stephen Turnbull: The Christian Threat to Japan: Present Danger or Paper Tiger?

The making of samurai in tokugawa japan

Christal Whelan: The Legacy of Japan s Hidden Christians in Light of Martin Scorsese s Silence

Mark Williams: The Power of Silence: The Enduring Impact of End Sh saku s Classic Novel of Reconciliation

Stephen Turnbull: The Trials of the Tokugawa and the Passing of the Samurai

Anne Walthall: Samurai Women in Early Modern Japan: Constraints and Challenges

Thomas D. Conlan: The Rise of Warriors During the Warring States Period

Karl Friday: Martial Ways, Whys and Whens

Natasha Bennett: Armour for an Age of Peace

Constantine N. Vaporis: Performance, Display, and the Spectacular: The Great Peace and Samurai Culture in Tokugawa Japan

Michael Wert: The Invention of the Samurai in Early Modern Japan

Oleg Benesch: Constructing the Samurai, Constructing the Nation: Martial Values and the Invention of Bushido in Modern Japan

Japan past and present: society, thought and religion in meiji japan

James L. Huffman: The Faces of Meiji

Naoki Sakai: From an Outward-Looking Society to an Inward-Looking One

Peter Nosco: Seeking Knowledge throughout the World: Carl Peter Thunberg and the Spread of Scientific Knowledge in Japan

Margaret Mehl: Chinese Learning [Kangaku] Between Classical And National Scholarship

John Breen: Shinto in Meiji Japan: Reflections on Ise

James E. Ketelaar: The Buddha Is Dead, Long Live the Buddha or how Buddhology and Colonisation Helped Ameliorate the 19th-century Persecution of Buddhism in Japan

M. Antoni J. Ucerler, SJ The Last Persecution of Christianity in Meiji Japan

Lars Vargö The Dramatic Changes of the Twentieth Century