E. Taylor Atkins is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Northern Illinois University, USA. He is the author of Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001), Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945 (2010), and editor of Jazz Planet (2003).

1st edition reviews:“[It] brings to the fore themes such as cultural power, political conflict, and social identity (importantly, including gender, class, and race) against the backdrop of Japan's cultural history.”

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The worst which has been thought and said? Defining popular culture 2 Floating worlds—the birth of popular culture in Japan 3 A whole new world—cultural exchanges with East Asia and Europe4 Naughty and nice—early modern Japan’s culture wars5 Popular culture as subject and object of Meiji modernization 6 Cultural living—cosmopolitan modernism in imperial Japan 7 Entertaining empire—popular culture as a “technology of imperialism” 8 “Our spirit against their steel”—mobilizing culture for war 9 Democracy, monstrosity, and pensive prosperity—postwar pop 10 Millennial Japan as dream factory Afterword—Contemplating cool NotesReferences Index

E. Taylor Atkins is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Northern Illinois University, USA. He is the author of Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001), Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945 (2010), and editor of Jazz Planet (2003).

1st edition reviews:“[It] brings to the fore themes such as cultural power, political conflict, and social identity (importantly, including gender, class, and race) against the backdrop of Japan's cultural history.”

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The worst which has been thought and said? Defining popular culture 2 Floating worlds—the birth of popular culture in Japan 3 A whole new world—cultural exchanges with East Asia and Europe4 Naughty and nice—early modern Japan’s culture wars5 Popular culture as subject and object of Meiji modernization 6 Cultural living—cosmopolitan modernism in imperial Japan 7 Entertaining empire—popular culture as a “technology of imperialism” 8 “Our spirit against their steel”—mobilizing culture for war 9 Democracy, monstrosity, and pensive prosperity—postwar pop 10 Millennial Japan as dream factory Afterword—Contemplating cool NotesReferences Index