Global Oriental Ltd – förlag

Torii Enshin was the son of a high-ranking warrior in the late-fifteenth century and a skilled swordsman. He was disturbed at the sad lives of the common people and became a priest. He intended to devote his life to healing the poor suffering everywhere in war-torn Japan. Then found himself reluctantly having to use his samurai skills once again.

A unique take on modern life in Tokyo. A Japan of trains, every day to and fro, carriage scenes and theatre, vistas from the window, advertising posters. To be savoured through the Odakyu line. Pitched as creative text and line-graphics, Tokyo Commute offers on-track and off-track observations. Poetics of Japanese routine and etiquette.

Olonkho is the general name for the entire Yakut heroic epic including ‘Nurgun Botur the Swift’ – some 36,000 lines of verse. It has an ancient origin dating back to when the ancestors of the present-day Yakut peoples lived on their former homeland and closely communicated with the Turkic and Mongolian peoples living in the Altay and Sayan regions.

Witty, learned excursion into the world of humour and comic literature as revealed by works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Oliver Goldsmith and Henry Fielding. Glorious insights and observations provided by author’s life experience in diplomacy. A rich, fascinating mix of literary idiom, theatre of the absurd, comic elements of the human condition.

Distributed for Renaissance Books

This book takes an in-depth look at the study of Japan in contemporary Britain, highlighting the many strengths but pointing out some weaknesses, while offering a valuable record of the origins and development of Japanese Studies in British universities and other institutions. It has essays by scholars from universities all over Britain.

This book seeks to examine the evolving perception of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) of the South China Sea (SCS), and Beijing’s accompanying maritime strategy to claim them, particularly in the context of the strategies of the neighboring stake-holding nations. In addition to long-standing territorial disputes over the islands and waters of the SCS, China and the other littoral states—Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Indonesia—have growing and often mutually exclusive interests in the offshore energy reserves and fishing grounds. Each chapter on the littoral states closely examines that state’s territorial claims to the islands and waters of the SCS, its primary economic and military interests in these areas, its views on the sovereignty disputes over the entire SCS, its strategy to achieve its objectives, and its views on the U.S. involvement in any and all of these issues.

Supported by a number of high-profile case studies, this volume offers a comprehensive exploration of Japanese-German economic relations through the whole of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. It also offers clarification on the structure and processes of the world economy in the same period.

Gavan McCormack’s latest work argues that Abe Shinzo’s efforts to re-engineer the Japanese state may fail, but his radicalism continues to shake the country and have consequences not easy to predict. Its significance will be recognized by those researching contemporary world politics, international relations and the history of modern Japan.

Incorporating over 250 illustrations, this is the first comprehensive study in English of French artist and caricaturist George Ferdinand Bigot (1860-1927) who, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, was renowned in Japan but barely known in his own country. Even today, examples of his cartoons appear in Japanese school textbooks. Inspired by what he saw of Japanese culture and way of life at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878, Bigot managed to find his way to Japan in 1882 and immediately set about developing his career as an artist working in pen and ink, watercolours and oils. He also quickly exploited his talent as a highly skilled sketch artist and cartoonist. His output was prodigious and included regular commissions from The Graphic and various Japanese as well as French journals. He left Japan in 1899, never to return. The volume includes a full introduction of the life, work and artistry of Bigot by Christian Polak, together with an essay by Hugh Cortazzi on Charles Wirgman, publisher of Japan Punch. Wirgman was Bigot’s ‘predecessor’ and friend (he launched his own satirical magazine Tôbaé in 1887, the year Japan Punch closed). Georges Bigot and Japan also makes a valuable contribution to Meiji Studies and the history of both Franco- and Anglo-Japanese relations, as well as the role of art in modern international relations.

This is the first monograph on the subject to be published in English. It comprises 130 full-colour plates of shaman gods. Supported by two introductory chapters ‘Reflections on Shaman God Paintings and Shamanism’ by Kim Tae-gon, and ‘The Shaman God Paintings as an Icon and Its Artistic Qualities’.

Isabella Bird's best-selling book on Japan is republished here, but with a difference: for the first time, it is now fully annotated with supporting commentaries, providing the twenty-first century reader with an enhanced informed view of the new 'modern Japan' as Bird experienced it in 1878.

“Japan had a tortuous relationship with internationalism between 1840, when Shibusawa was born, and 1931, the year the nation invaded Manchuria and when he passed away. The key to understanding Shibusawa’s thoughts against the background of this history, the author shows, lies in the concept of ‘people’s diplomacy’.” [Akira Iriye]

In 1862, a British merchant was killed by samurai at Namamugi, a quiet village near Yokohama. One year later, a British fleet bombarded Kagoshima to extract reparations, reducing much of this south-western city to ash. This captivating re-telling, locates the story firmly within the wider context of British imperial expansion in East Asia.

This title discusses what it means to be Norwegian, in the past and now. It briefly turns to Norway’s history in a European context, largely unknown outside (and even within) Norway. This is for anyone who looks to Norway and wishes to discover why she survived and became a distinct rich nation. She is a young state and an old nation.

Draws on archive of material, a first in English to take an in-depth look at Kyoto’s modern transformation – its reinvention after ‘collapse’ (Meiji Restoration) and relocation of the imperial court to Tokyo. Includes: introduction, chapters on notable historical elements that sustain Kyoto as a quintessentially modern ‘ancient capital’ today.

First study published in English. An intractable, divisive social problem with roots in pre-history, the ongoing discrimination against Dôwa communities (Buraku). Identified with ‘unclean’ work linked to specific occupations, their resulting marginalization and isolation within society as a whole remains a veiled yet contested issue.