Publications of Note

Publications of Note

Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2005), is a special issue titled "Frontiers of Japanese Studies." It includes reports (some in English, some in Japanese) on Japan studies curricula at European universities as well as an interview with Thomas P. Kasulis on "Making Japanese Thought More Intelligible to the West." More information about this publication may be found at www.oc.vu.lt/aov_home.html.

Escape from Impasse: The Decision to Open Japan. By Mitani Hiroshi; translated by David Noble. International House of Japan, Tokyo, 2006. xxi, 332 pages. Mitani's book was originally published in Japanese as Prii raikō (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003). It surveys the process by which "Japanese relations with the outside world moved first towards a consolidation of sakoku policies and then reversed in the direction of kaikoku" (p. xv). The author seeks to place the Japanese experience in a wider context and to assess the "universal significance" of several issues from nineteenth-century Japanese history: response to long-anticipated crisis, communication between different linguistic communities, and "blundering into a dead-end and groping for the way back out" (p. xix).

Mechademia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Mechademia is a series of books devoted to creative and critical work on anime, manga, and the fan arts. Each book is organized around a particular narrative aspect of anime and manga. Volume 1 (2006; $19.95, paper) is titled Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga, Volume 2 (2007) is on Networks of Desire, and Volume 3 (2008) is titled Limits of the Human. For more information, see www.mechademia.org.

La jeune fille et la mort: Misogynie ascétique et représentations macabres du corps féminin dans le bouddhisme japonais. By François Lachaud. Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Japonaises, Paris, 2006. vii, 373 pages. Lechaud begins his consideration of the impure and the female with the Theravāda tradition. He moves on to the Chinese canon and then to changes in Buddhism on the new "terrain" of Japan in the Heian through Tokugawa periods. The book is "une exploration minutieuse des textes doctrinaux, de la littérature religieuse et profane japonais."

Die "böse Alte" in der japanischen Populärkultur der Edo-Zeit: Die Feindvalenz und ihr soziales Umfeld. By Suzanne Formanek. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 2005. xvi, 566 pages. ¥66.40, paper. Formanek's extensive analysis examines negative images of old women in Tokugawa popular culture. She finds that the "malicious, fraudulent, and murderous" old woman was a standard figure. She considers the forms of these women (magical cats, for example), how the images were taken up in genres from children's literature to theater, influences of Buddhism, and the history and regional variations of these images.

Ukiyo'e Caricatures 1842–1905. Online database available at www.univie.ac.at/karikaturen. Project directed by Sepp Linhart. This database seeks to show how ukiyo'e was changed by the Tenpō reforms in the 1840s, how political caricatures reached their peak around the time of the Meiji Restoration, and how woodblock prints declined as a mass medium in the early twentieth century. The database began with 500 images and will be continually expanded.

Le Japon après la guerre. Edited by Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard-Sakai, and Emmanuel Lozerand. Éditions Philippe Picquier, Arles, 2007. 406 pages. ¥19.50, paper. The essays in this work examine different ways of looking at Japan's wartime and postwar experience on subjects ranging from politics and education to the environment, arts, and literature. Contributors are Makiko Andro-Ueda, Karine Arneodo, Anne Bayard-Sakai, Eddy Dufourmont, Brice Fauconnier, Christian Galan, Anne Gossot, Paul Jobin, Jacques Joly, Emmanuel Lozerand, Michael Lucken, Eric Seizelet, and Bernard Thormann.

La cour et l'administration du Japon a l'époque de Heian. By Francine Hérail. Librairie Droz, Geneva, 2006. 798 pages. Francine Hérail in this volume considers the ministries, the eight departments, bureaus (dealing with, for example...