Publications of Note

Poverty and Social Welfare in Japan. By Masami Iwata and Akihiko Nishizawa. Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2008. xxiii, 323 pages. $34.95, paper. This is a translation of the 2005 volume titled Hinkon to shakai teki haijo (Minerva Shobō). In its 12 chapters, poverty and social exclusion are assessed through the opinions and behavior of the people living in these conditions and examined in relation to the policies and institutions set up to manage them. Subjects of individual chapters include older women and housing poverty, social exclusion of single men, migrant workers from overseas, and public housing. Contributors are Masami Iwata, Akihiko Nishizawa, Chizuka Hamamoto, Misa Izuhara, Yuko Hayasaka, Keiko Yamaguchi, Keiko Kawahara, Yukihiko Kitagawa, Kahoruko Yamamoto, and Yosuke Hirayama.

The Forgotten Japanese: Encounters with Rural Life and Folklore. By Miyamoto Tsuneichi; translated by Jeffrey S. Irish. Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, 2010. 315 pages. $29.95. "Miyamoto Tsuneichi (1907-81) . . . walked some one hundred thousand miles in search of the meaning of rural life in Japan. . . . and became a key government advisor, an advocate for the social and economic invigoration of rural communities weakened by outmigration and encumbered with an aging population" (p. 7). In 1960, he published Wasurerareta Nihonjin (Miraisha), a collection of life stories and vignettes told by people Miyamoto met during his travels. This translation is based on a longer version of that work prepared by the author. "The way of life that appeared to be nearing its end in Miyamoto's time is still nearing its end today . . . and may finally disappear as the last of those born in the Meiji period pass away" (p. 11).

An Anthology of Nagauta. By William P. Malm. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2010. 211 pages, with two CDs bound into book. $75.00, cloth; $30.00, paper. This anthology is based primarily on translations used in nagauta performances during annual concerts (1964-94) at the University of Michigan and "is printed in honor of the students who performed in them" (p. ix). While the author warns that he "is not qualified to deal with the deeper literary subtleties of the texts" and that choreography is another missing element of the study, the book includes recordings on two compact discs of seven representative pieces from different periods. The book's two short chapters ("An Introduction to Shamisen Music History, Theory, and Practice" and "Form in Nagauta Music") are followed by song texts and commentary on more than 60 compositions dating from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.

Asian Aesthetics. Edited by Ken-ichi Sasaki. Kyoto University Press, Kyoto, 2010. xviii, 309 pages. ¥4,200, paper. This project began at the fifteenth International Congress of Aesthetics in Japan in 2001. In addressing the global question of how civilization might renovate itself—"to discover a new way of managing this planet we live on" (p. ix)—this book uses aesthetics to give voice to views different from those of the dominant Western paradigm. "No general view of the wide scope of Asian aesthetics such as the one presented here has ever been attempted" (p. ix). The book's five sections cover Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, and Southeast Asian aesthetics.

PostGender: Gender, Sexuality and Performativity in Japanese Culture. Edited by Ayelet Zohar. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2009. xxvi, 285 pages. $67.99. This volume includes essays presented at a 2005 conference along with later contributions solicited from other scholars. It "advances the direction of inquiry drawn by postmodern and postcolonial critiques, and simultaneously, the articles and theoretical tools presented create exciting new research possibilities—not just to differentiate and consider cultural specificity as a sufficient ground for alternative terminology that may expand the language of gender, sexuality or even psychoanalysis, but also to work in a direction oppositional to psychoanalytic discourse" (pp. xv-xvi). Contributors, in addition to the editor, are Jennifer Robertson, Maki Isaka, Michiko Kasahara, Jason Herlands, Leslie Winston, Ory Bartal, Tamaki Saito, Kinneret Noy, Sayumi Takahashi Harb, Ayala Klemperer-Markman, Bracha L. Ettinger, and Kyoko Gardiner.

Japan in Trade Isolation, 1926-37 and 1948-85. By Michiko Ikeda. I-House Press, Tokyo, 2008. xiii, 363 pages. ¥2,858. Ikeda...