Home / Books / Japan in the World

Japan in the World

Japan in the World cover image

Book

Pages: 368

Published: June 1993

Editors: Masao Miyoshi, Harry Harootunian

Contributors: Masao Miyoshi, Tetsuo Najita, Perry Anderson, Eqbal Ahmad, Arif Dirlik, Bruce Cumings, Miriam Silverberg, Christena Turner, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fredric Jameson, Leslie Pincus, Naoki Sakai, Karatani Kojin, Rob Wilson, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Harry Harootunian, Oe Kenzaburo

Since the end of World War II, Japan has determinately remained outside the current of world events and uninvolved in the processes determining global history and politics. In Japan and the World, distinguished scholars, novelists, and intellectuals articulate how Japan—despite unprecedented economic prowess in securing dominance in the world's market—is caught in a complex dependency with the United States. Drawing on critical and postmodernist theory, this timely volume situates this dependency in a broader historical context and assesses Japan's current dealings in international politics, society, and culture.
Among the many topics covered are: racism in U.S.-Japanese relations; productivity and workplace discourse; Western cultural hegemony; the constructing of a Japanese cultural history; and the place of the novelist in today's world. Originally published as a special issue of boundary 2 (Fall 1991), this edition includes four new essays on Japanese industrial revolution; the place of English studies in Japan; how American cultural, historical, and political discourse represented Japan and in turn how America's version of Japan became Japan's version of itself; and an "archaeology" of hegemonic relationships between Japan and America and Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.

Contributors. Eqbal Ahmad, Perry Anderson, Bruce Cumings, Arif Dirlik, H.D. Harootunian, Kazuo Ishuro, Fredric Jameson, Kojin Karatani, Oe Kenzaburo, Masao Miyoshi, Tetsuo Najita, Leslie Pincus, Naoki Sakai, Miriam Silverberg, Christena Turner, Rob Wilson, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto

Buy

Availability: Loading...

Price: Loading...

Request a desk or exam copy Spring 2026 Web Sale

Information

Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

Back to Top

At the time of his death in 2009, Masao Miyoshi was Professor of Japanese, English, and Comparative Literature at the Univesity of California, San Diego. He is coeditor, with Fredric Jameson, of The Cultures of Globalization, also published by Duke University Press.

H. D. Harootunian is Director of the Program in East Asian Studies at New York University.

Table Of Contents

Back to Top
Japan in the World / Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian 1

The World

Japan's Industrial Revolution in Historical Perspective / Tetsuo Najita 13

The Prussia of the East? / Perry Anderson 31

Racism and the State: The Coming Crisis of U.S.-Japanese Relations / Eqbal Ahmad 40

"Past Experience, If Not Forgotten, Is a Guide to the Future": or, What Is in a Text? The Politics of History in Chinese-Japanese Relations / Arif Dirlik 49

Archaeology, Descent, Emergence: Japan in British/American Hegemony, 1900–1950 / Bruce Cumings 79

Society

Constructing a New Cultural History of Prewar Japan / Miriam Silverberg 115

The Spirit of Productivity: Workplace Discourse on Culture and Economics in Japan / Christena Turner 144

Culture

The Novelist in Today's World: A Conversation / Kazuo Isiguro and Eo Kenzaburo 163

Soseki and Western Modernism / Fredric R. Jameson 177

America's Japan/Japan's Japan / H. D. Harootunian 186

In a Labyrinth of Western Desire: Kuki Shuzo and the Discovery of Japanese Being / Leslie Pincus 222

Return to the West/Return to the East: Watsuji Tetsuro's Anthropology and Discussions of Authenticity / Naoki Sakai 237

The Invention of English Literature in Japan / Masao Miyoshi 271

Theory's Imaginal Other: American Encounters with South Korea and Japan / Rob Wilson 316

The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and the Postcolonial World Order / Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto 338

Index 355

Contributors 363

Rights

Back to Top

Sales/Territorial Rights: World

Rights and licensing

Additional Information

Back to Top
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1368-7 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-1350-2 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-8180-8 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381808

Publicity material