The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of contemporary Japan.
By Aaron Miller
August 23, 2024
Through a study of basketball in Japan, this book aims to help readers better understand the historical formation and contemporary reformation of cultural identity in Japan. This reformation includes the process of reconciling the perceived differences between basketball in Japan and basketball in ...
Edited
By Aeneas Zi Wang, Aimi Muranaka, Florian Coulmas
August 21, 2024
This edited book argues that a new perspective on immigration is needed. As many advanced economies are ageing, and their populations stagnate or decline, immigrants are increasingly required to fill in the gaps left behind by shrinking workforces. Against this backdrop, the outdated view that it ...
By Victoria Young
June 03, 2024
This book examines contemporary debates on such concepts as national literature, world literature, and the relationship each of these to translation, from the perspective of modern Japanese fiction. By reading between the gaps and revealing tensions and blind spots in the image that Japanese ...
By Robert O'Mochain, Yuki Ueno
May 27, 2024
Bringing together two voices, practice and theory, in a collaboration that emerges from lived experience and structured reflection upon that experience, O’Mochain and Ueno show how entrenched discursive forces exert immense influence in Japanese society and how they might be most effectively ...
By Jung-Sun Han
May 13, 2024
This book examines civic activism to conserve dark heritage built by the colonial and wartime labor regime in contemporary Japan. Introducing and analyzing local organizations and their activities in multiple locations throughout Japan, this book looks at the ways in which the Japanese have ...
By Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon
May 07, 2024
This book presents a scholarly investigation of the development and culture of Japanese videogame arcades, both from a historical and contemporary point of view. Providing an overview of the historical evolution of public amusement spaces from the early rooftop amusement spaces from the early ...
By Nadzeya Shutava
February 13, 2024
This book explores the recent developments in global and Japanese whaling from the viewpoint of the members of the Japanese whaling community, a perspective that is largely neglected and misinterpreted. Japanese whaling has been one of the most contentious issues in global environmental governance ...
By Erez Joskovich
December 29, 2023
This book explores the emergence and growth of Zen as a non-monastic spiritual practice in modern Japan. Focusing on several prominent lay Zen associations, most notably Ningen Zen, it explores different aspects of lay Zen as a lived religion, such as organization, ideology, and ritual. Through a ...
Edited
By Yoichi Funabashi, Koji Nakakita
December 12, 2023
The second Abe administration, which lasted for seven years and eight months, turned out to be the longest administration in Japan’s constitutional history. What factors contributed to its remarkable longevity? What accomplishments and enduring legacies did this administration achieve during its ...
Edited
By Yasuhiro Takeda, Jun Ito, Yusuke Kawashima
December 01, 2023
In 2004, Japan instituted a system to protect citizens against military attacks and terrorism for the first time after World War II. Faced with the Tokyo subway attack (1995), the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001), and the changing security environment in East Asia, the Japanese government was forced ...
By Etsuko Kato
December 01, 2023
This book explores “self-searching migrants,” a new group of indefinitely globally mobile people whose purpose of overseas stay is the search of true self and the work they really want to do, using Japanese trans-Pacific sojourners as the case study. Utilizing testimonies collected from interviews ...
By Paul Dunscomb
October 27, 2023
This book examines Japan’s Heisei era through the lens of the crisis in Japanese professional baseball of 2004, challenging the narrative of decline that dominates the discourse on the period. The story of this crisis reveals much about the Japanese psyche during the “Lost Decade,” about the nature...