Roy Starrs – författare

Japan is widely regarded as having a unique culture and a strong national identity. Paradoxically, however, many basic elements of Japanese culture are not originally Japanese. Since the beginning of its history, Japan has been one of the world’s major importers of foreign cultures. Its culture was thoroughly hybrid long before that word became fashionable in contemporary global studies. But this does not mean that Japan’s culture lacks originality. The Japanese have always made strikingly original contributions, even improvements, to whatever they imported. Even more significantly, the hybridity of their culture produced ongoing tensions that served as a kind of creative dynamo for Japanese writers, artists, and intellectuals. This book explores the fundamental creative tension between the native and the foreign in many areas of Japanese culture, from politics and religion to art and literature – a tension also often interpreted as between tradition and modernity.

Topics include: Government Intervention and Economic Growth in East Asia, Agricultural Nationalism in the Age of Globalization, Japan's Dominance and Multi- Racial Coalitions in Malaysia.

Topics include: Government Intervention and Economic Growth in East Asia, Agricultural Nationalism in the Age of Globalization, Japan's Dominance and Multi- Racial Coalitions in Malaysia.

Edited by Roy Starrs, this collection of essays by an international group of leading Japan scholars presents new research and thinking on Japanese modernism, a topic that has been increasingly recognized in recent years to be key to an understanding of contemporary Japanese culture and society. By adopting an open, multidisciplinary, and transnational approach to this multifaceted topic, the book sheds new light both on the specific achievements and on the often-unexpected interrelationships of the writers, artists and thinkers who helped to define the Japanese version of modernism and modernity. Specific topics addressed include the literary modernism of major writers such as Akutagawa, Kawabata, Kajii, Miyazawa, and Murakami, avant-garde modernism in painting, music, theatre, and in the performance art of Yoko Ono, and the everyday modernism of popular culture and of new urban activities such as shopping and sports.

Edited by Roy Starrs, this collection of essays by an international group of leading experts on Japanese religion, anthropology, history, literature and music presents new research and thinking on the long and complex relationship between culture and disaster in Japan, one of the most “disaster-prone” countries in the world. Focusing first on responses to the triple disasters of March 2011, the book then puts the topic in a wider historical context by looking at responses to earlier disasters, both natural and man-made, including the great quakes of 1995 and 1923 and the atomic bombings of 1945. This wide-ranging “double structure” enables an in-depth understanding of the complexities of the issues involved that goes well beyond the clichés and the headlines.